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COPYRIGHT DSPOSfR. 



THE NORTHWEST 



UNDER THREE FLAGS 



1635-1796 



By 



CHARLES MOORE 



WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 




NEW YORK AND LONDON 

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

1900 



TVVO COPIES HECE1VED, ^, 

Library of CoBgrot% ' ' 

Office of the 

MAP 8 -1900 

Keglster of Copyright* 



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Copyriglit, 1900, by Cuarles Moore. 

All rig/Ui ratrved. 



TO 

A. W. M. M. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

THE FKENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

Jacques dirtier on the St. Lawrence — Champlain, the Father of New 
France — Wanderings of Etienne Brule — Brule Tells Sagard of 
Lake Superior and Shows Him a Copper Ingot — Nicolet Discov- 
ers Lake Michigan — Green Bay and Its People — Drowning of 
Nicolet and Birth of Joliet — Raymbault and Jogues at Sault Ste. 
Marie— The Backhone of the New World— The Relentless Iro- 
quois— Fall of the Huron Missions— Medard Chouart, Sicur des 
Grosseilliers — Peter Esprit Radisson as a Captive — Grosseilliers 
andRadisson on Lake Michigan — Near the Mississippi — Ambigui- 
ties in Radisson's Voyages — Father Rene Menard on the Great Lake 
— His Death in the Woods — Radisson Describes the Beauties of 
Lake Superior— The White-fish— The Grand Sables — Pictured 
Rocks— The Keweenaw Portage — The Sioux — A Winter Gather- 
ing at the Head of Lake Superior — The Ingratitude of Rulers — 
The Hudson Bay Company— Father Claude Allouez Hears of the 
Missepi— Marquette Longs to Find the Great Biver— St. Ignace 
Founded by Marquette— Sieur Saint Lusson Claims the West for 
France— Louis Joliet at Sault Ste. Marie— Marquette and Joliet 
Start for the Mississippi— Their Success and Their Return— Mar- 
quette Drawn to the Southern Savages— His Death Voyage — A 
Strange Funeral Procession— The First Ship on the Upper Lakes 
— La Salle and the Griffin— An Ambitious Explorer— Henry de 
Touty— Father Hennepin Longs to See New Countries— Lake 
Ste. Claire— Pilot Lucas Navigates Fresh Water— The Loss of the 
Griffin — Fort Crevecceur — A Winter Journey Page 1 

CHAPTER II 

CADILLAC FOUNDS DETROIT 

France in Control Throughout the Northwest— Inroads of the Eng- 
lish—French Forts in the Detroit Country— Fort St. Joseph on 

v 



CONTENTS 

the St. Clair — Michilimackinac a Strategic Point for the Fur- 
trade — Cadillac — Iroquois Broth — Robert Livingston's Plan to 
Build a Fort on the Detroit — Cadillac at Quebec and Paris — Con- 
trol of the Indians — Detroit Founded — French Trade Monopolies 
— Father Carheil, a Devoted Missionary — Cadillac as a Moses — The 
Sale of Brandy — Beginnings of Family Life in the Northwest — 
Prosperity of Detroit — The Commandant's Extortions — Dubuis- 
son at Detroit — Attack by the Mascoutius and Ottagamies — Help 
from the Allies — The Battle at Grosse Pointe — Immigration from 
France — The Jesuits Engross the Trade — Count Repentigny at 
Sault Ste. Marie • Pase 38 



CHAPTER III 

THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

The French in Possession of the Northwest — The Discoveries of the 
Cabots the Basis of the English Claims — Sir Walter Raleigh — 
First English Settlement upon Roanoke Island — Jamestown 
Founded — Plymouth Company Chartered — Early English Grants 
— Claims of Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York 
— The Virginia Corporation Dissolved — Character of the Early 
Colonists of Virginia — The Washington Family — Lord Fairfax 
and the Culpeper Grant — George Washington as a Surveyor — 
Scotch-Irish in the Shenandoah Valley — The Scotch-Irish Under- 
take to Protect Frontiers if Allowed Liberty of Conscience — The 
Ohio Company — Celoron on the Ohio — Christopher Gist's Explo- 
rations for the Ohio Company — Logstown— Gist and Croghau on 
the Muskingum — Gist the First Protestant to Hold Religious Ser- 
vices in the Northwest — Treaties with Delawares and Shawanese 
— The Journey to Piqua — An Ottawa Embassy from Detroit — 
Gist Returns Home Through Kentucky — Lawrence Washington 
at the Head of the Ohio Company — Religious Toleration — The 
Treaty at Logstown in 1752 — Gist Removes to Ohio — Celoron at 
Detroit — Charles Langlade Attacks Piqua — Duquesne Prepares 
to Occupy the Ohio Country — Governor Dinwiddie Sends George 
Washington with a Message to the French — Washington at Logs- 
town — The Position of the Indians — Washington at Venango — 
Captain Joncaire — Washington Delivers His Message — Publi- 
cation in England of Washington's Journal — Governor Dinwid- 
die Puts Virginia on the War Footing — Lukewarmness of the 
Colonies — The Albauy Assembly — English Claims to the Ohio — 
Sir William Johnson— Franklin's Plan for a Union of the Colo- 
nies — Franklin Favors Inland Colonies on the Ohio — Fort Neces- 
sity — The Braddock Campaign— Washington Becomes a Member 
of Braddock's Military Famil}^ — Braddock's Defeat — Langlade 

vi 



CONTENTS 

Leads the Attack — The English Frontier Rolled Back — The 
French and Indian War — The Humiliation of England in Amer- 
ica and Europe — The Rise of Pitt — General John Forbes Occu- 
pies Fort Duquesne — The Fall of Quebec and Montreal — Major 
Robert Rogers Receives the Surrender of Detroit — Rogers Meets 
Pontiac — The British Control the Northwest Page 63 

CHAPTER IV 

THE PONTIAC WAR 

Readjustments after the French and Indian War — Isolation of the 
Northwest— Captain Donald Campbell's Card-parties — An Indian 
War Impending — Sir William Johnson Enjoys Detroit Society — 
Rumors of French and Spanish Conquest — Sir Robert Davers 
Visits the Upper Lakes — Major Henry Gladwin in Command — 
Pontiac's, Council at the River Ecorses — Reports of Indian 
Treachery — Carver's Story of Pontiac's Repulse — The Real In- 
formant — Sketch of Henry Gladwin — Murder of the Supposed 
Traitor — A Fatal Council — The Attack on Detroit — A Restless 
Corpse — Murder of Sir Robert Davers — The Prospect of Resist- 
ance — Council at M. Cuillerier's House — Pontiac Essentially a Sav- 
age —Gladwin's Problem — British Disasters at Sandusky, the 
Miamis, and St. Joseph — Capture of the Bateaux — The Dark 
Days — The Massacre at Michilimackinac — Pontiac at Church — 
Indian Currency — News of the Treaty Between England and 
France — The French Join the English — Fire-rafts — The Torture 
of Captain Campbell — Dalyell's Sortie — Robert Rogers Makes a 
Stand— The Brave Death of Dalyell— Bloody Run— The Attack 
on the Gladwin — Pontiac's Message to the Illinois French — An 
Unsatisfactory Answer — Gladwin's Opinion of the French — Rum 
More Potent than Fire-arms — Failure of Pontiac's Conspiracy — 
Gladwin at Court — Bradstreet at Detroit 106 

CHAPTER V 

ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION OF THE NOETHWEST 

England's Gains by the Seven Years' War — Franklin Argues for the 
Retention of Canada — Disunion Among the Colonies — The Bar- 
barity of an Indian Frontier — Pennsylvania's Trade with England 
— The Governments of Quebec, the Floridas, and Grenada— Re- 
strictions as to Land Grants — Frauds and Abuses in Indian Pur- 
chases — The First Charter of the Northwest — The Ohio Com- 
pany's New Plans — Cresap and Bouquet — Uneasiness in Virginia 
—Governor Farquier — Bouquet Anticipates a Land Bubble — 
Character of the Settlers— Indians Alarmed at the Inroads of the 



CONTENTS 

Settlers— The Battle of Bushy Bun— The Colonial Militia Laws 

— Sketch of Colonel Henry Bouquet — Bradstreet's Message — 
The Bouquet Expedition to the Muskingum — Indian Trea 

— The Savages Promise Peace — Sir William Johnson the Peace- 
maker — Return of the Prisoners — George Croghan on the Ohio 

— Messages to the French Traders — At the Falls of the Ohio — 
"Post Vincent" — Father Marest's Letter — Francois Morgan deVin- 
senne — Croghan and His Captors — Pontiac and Croghan at Fort 
Chartres — The Secret Treaty Between France a; - ..'. Spain— Spain 
Controls Louisiana — Lieutenant Fraser Rescued by Pontiac — 
Pontiac at Oswego — Minder of Pontiac — Croghan at Detroit — 
The Wal \ Grant— Sir William Johnson ami Benjamin Frank- 
lin — Lord Shelburne's Approval, Lord Hillsborough's Opposition 
— Combination with the Ohio Company— The Treaty of German 
Flats— The Iroquois Claims—" The Dark and Bloody Ground " — 
Sk tch of Sir William Johnson— The Boundary Moved from the 
A' ghanies to the Ohio— Franklin's Saeeess ; Lord Hillsborou 
Resignation — Vandalia — Virginians in the Kentucky Region — 
Pittsburg a Virginia Town — Lord Dunmore's Perplexities — The 
Growth of Independence— Dunmore's Laud Speculations — The 

> Murders — The Dunmore War— The Battle of Point 
Pleasant — Logan's Message — Jeff erson's Injustice to Captain 
i. i . sap— The Northwest Pledged to Freedom Page 141 



CHAPTER VI 

THE QUEBEC ACT AXP THE REVOLUTION 

The British Policy Makes the Northwest a Hunting-ground — The 
Struggle for New Lands— General James Murray. Governor of 
v la— S icceeded by General Guy Carleton — The French l"n- 
' .'.ish Law— The lehec /Let a Necessity for Canada 
—The Americans Resent It— The Measure in Parliament— Chat- 
ham Opp «es 1: as •■ Cruel, Odious, and Oppressive"— His P 
c I \ —Lord North's Defence— [ IS --vest a Country of " Bears 
rs "—Church Establishment— Colonel Barre* to the Res- 
cue— Charles Fox s rilhes— Edmund Burke Success 
Struggles to Fix New York Boundaries — The Penns Protest— 
I eral Carleton Before the Commons— The Canadians Want no 
Sediti is Assemblies Like rhos in America— A Governor D 
ful as to the Extent of His Dominions— The Northwest an Asy- 
lum for Vagabonds— Indian Independence — Unavailing Protests 
A.gainsl the Quebec Bill— Beginnings of Civil Government in 
the Northwest— Henry Hamilton. Lieutenant-Governor— Crosses 
treal in Disguise— Reaches Detroit and Likes the Place— The 
Eng d Out the French— Trader and Cheat— Indian De- 

viii 



CONTENTS 

baucherieS — Detroit French in Sympathy with the Virginians- 
Spanish Intrigues — The Declaration of Independence Brought to 
Detroit — Hamilton's Anger — Daniel Boone a Prisoner at Detroit — 
Hamilton Tries to Hansom the Pioneer — Boone's Escape — Ham- 
ilton Practices the War-dance — Lieutenant-Governor Abhott, of 
Vincenues — Indians Congratulated on the Number of Scalps 
Brought in — Carleton to be Succeeded by Haldimand — Savage 
Diplomacy — M. do Rocheblave's Capture at Kaskaskia An- 
nounced to Hamilton — Hamilton Prepares to Drive the Ameri- 
cans from the Illinois — Daniel Boone in Kentucky — The Colony 
of Transylvania — George Rogers Clark Elected to the Virginia 
Assembly from Kentucky — He Visits Governor Patrick Henry— 
Obtains a Supply of Powder — The County of Kentucky — Clark's 
Bold Plans— The French Alliance with the Colonies Aids Clark- 
Clark Walks into Kaskaskia — Father Gibault Undertakes a Revo- 
lution at Vincennes — Virginia's Couutj r of Illinois — American 
Civil Government Begins in the Northwest — Old Mackinac— Cap- 
tain Arent Schuyler de Peyster — A Poet-soldier — Langlade Takes 
the Lake Indians to Montreal — A Boy's Baptism of Fire — A 
Favorite of the Manitou — Langlade's Exploits at Quebec — He 
Takes the Oath of Allegiance to the English King — Chevalier 
St. Luc la Corue and Langlade on Lake Champlain — Burgoyue 
Charges His Defeat, to the Desertion of the Savages — Langlade 
Incites the Lake Indians to Invade the Illinois Country — Hamil- 
ton Supported by the War Ministers — His Difficulties — Lord 
George Germain Issues Orders to Stir Up the Indians — The Vin- 
cennes Expedition — Hamilton Captures Fort Sackville — Francis 
Vigo— Clark Must Take or Be Taken — A Desperate Chance and 
a Terrible Journey — Success — Hamilton Makes the Best of a 
Bad Matter — Mr. Justice Pejean and His Supplies Captured — 
Jefferson Orders Hamilton in Irons — Clark Plans the Capture of 
Detroit — The Savages Terrorized — Fort Patrick Henry — Jefferson 
Plans a Fort on the Mississippi — Land-warrants in Lieu of Boun- 
ties — Tobacco Currency — Jefferson's Instructions as to the Ind- 
ians — Clark's Popularity — Failure of Flans for an Aggressive 
Campaign iu the Northwest Page 195 

CHAPTER VII 

THE WAR IN THE NOKTIIWEST 

Frederick Haldimand— Takes Service with the British— A Successful 
Administrator — Haldimand Commands the English Forces in 
America — Gives Way at New York to a Born Briton — He is 
Transferred to Quebec — Negotiates for a Reunion of Vermont 
with the Crown — Detroit iu Danger — Haldiuiaud's Thrift— The 



CONTENTS 

Iudians Expensive Allies— Captain Richard Beringer Lernoult — 
Isadore Cheue Reports the Capture of Hamilton — Captain Bird 
Builds Fort Lernoult ; Clark's Sarcasm — Bird Leads the Indians 
to War— The Savages " Always Cooking or Counselling " — Forts 
Mcintosh aud Laurens Built and Deserted — Bird in Kentucky — 
Clark Retaliates— Captain Patt Sinclair at Michilimackiuac — He 
Removes the Fort to the Island — Father Gibault's Mischief — Sin- 
clair Plans an Incursion to the Illinois Country — Attacks the 
Spanish Town of St. Louis— Spain Plans to Invade the North- 
west — The Movable Fort St. Joseph — The Spanish on the Missis- 
sippi — A Winter Expedition — St. Joseph Captured — The Effect 
in Madrid — Spain's Extensive Claims to the Northwest — De Peys- 
ter Relieves Lernoult at Detroit— His Kindness to Captives — Tlie 
Campaign of 1780 — Rumors Running Through the Forests — 
Scalps aud Prisoners Sent to Detroit — Butler's Rangers Invade 
Kentucky — The Removal of the Moravians — De Peyster Sum- 
mons the Missionaries to Detroit — Captain Pipe — The Moravians 
Deny Having Aided the Americans — Their Towns in the Mus- 
kingum Valley — De Peyster Establishes the Moravians on the 
Clinton River — Their Wanderings — The Moravian Massacre Ex- 
cites the Apprehensions of the English — Fort Pitt's Commanders 
— General Irvine Brings Order Out of Chaos — "One Hundred 
Lashes, Well Laid On" — The Revolution at an End, but Not in 
the Northwest — The Crawford Expedition Against the Miami 
Indians— Washington and Crawford — The Savages Appeal to De 
Peyster for Aid — Haldimand Exhorts De Peyster to Repel the 
Raid — Defeat of the Americans by the British and Indians — Re- 
treat — Crawford's Death by Torture — His Fate a Retaliation 
for the Moravian Massacre — The Attack on Bryan's Station — 
Clark Ends the Revolution in the Northwest — Border Warfare 
Must Continue — Liberation of the Captives — The Chamber of 
Scalps Page 245 

CHAPTER VIII 

PEACE THAT PEOVES NO PEACE 

Lord Chatham's Dying Appeal— France Plans Revenge for the Treaty 
of 1703— Louis XVI. Forgets and Remembers— Franklin's Unique 
Position in France — John Adams Made Peace Commissioner — 
The Demands of Congress — France is Anxious to Curb the Power 
of the United States— Spain Strives to Win Gibraltar — The Atti- 
tude of Prussia and Russia — England's Shifting Policy — Lord 
Shelburne's Growth in Grace Towards America — Franklin's Pa- 
ternal Appeals to Louis XVI. — He Begins Separate Negotiations 
with England — John Adams Negotiates a Treaty with Holland — 

x 



CONTENTS 

John Jay's Failure in Spain— Franklin Summons Him to Paris — 
Jay Becomes the Leader in the Peace Negotiations — The Fear of 
American Growth and Power was Natural — Shelburne's Ultimata 
— Jay Wins Oswald's Confidence — The Northwest Boundary Dis- 
cussions — Jay's Ingenious Argument to Obtain the Waste Lands 
— A Choice of Lines Offered to the British — The Treaty Signed — 
America Congratulated on the Work of the Commissioners — 
Downfall of the Shelburne Ministry — The North -Fox Coalition 
Condemns and Adopts the Treaty — Haldimand Warns Townsend 
to Protect the Fur-trade — Good Reasons for His Apprehensions — 
Competition the Bane of Trade — The Northwest Company — The 
Grand Portage — The Spring Flotilla — The Fur -traders in the 
Northern Wilderness — Dangers of the Bush-ranger's Life— The 
Opulence of the Trader Barons — Private Vessels Forbidden on the 
Lakes — Washington Demands the Surrender of the Posts — Baron 
Steuben's Fruitless Errand — Haldimand's Prudence. — Jefferson 
Argues for the Surrender of the Posts — The British Contention — 
Haldimand Interested for the Loyalists — Brant Forms a New Ind- 
ian Confederacy — Brant a Lion in England — A War-whoop at a 
Masked-ball — The Indian Demands — They Appeal to Heaven for 
Justification — Message to Congress — Lord Dorchester's Position — 
The British Anticipate the Failure of the United States — A Brit- 
ish Spy in the Northwest — A Critical Situation for the United 
States — Washington Urges Western Communication — Protecting 
the Flanks and the Rear— A Group of Farewells Page 279 

CHAPTER IX 

THE NORTHWEST PROVIDED WITH A GOVERNMENT 

Silas Deane Advises the Sale of the Western Lands to Raise Funds for 
the Revolution — Maryland Insists that these Lands Belong to the 
Nation — Forbids Her Delegates to Ratify the Articles of Confed- 
eration — The Basis of Maryland's Complaint — Virginia Establishes 
a Land-office — Congress Asks the State to Suspend Land Opera- 
tions in the West — Virginia Protests against Maryland's Course 
— New York Cedes Her Claims to the Northwest Lands— Con- 
gress Takes Action — Connecticut Willing to Cede, with Reserva- 
tions — Virginia's Offer — Maryland Makes Her Point and Joins 
the Confederation — The United States Proclaimed at Home and 
Abroad — Congress Attempts to Overreach Virginia and Connecti- 
cut — Loyalty of Virginia — Transfer of Her Claims— Massachu- 
setts' Cessions — Connecticut Secures a Good Bargain — The Moral 
of the Cessions— Jefferson Plans a Government for the Northwest 
— The Indian Title of Occupancy — The United States Alone Can 
Purchase Lands of the Indians — Courts Organized at Vincennes 



CONTENTS 

and Kaskaskia — The "Custom of Paris" Still Operative— Free- 
dom the Birthright of the Northwest — Secession Prohibited — Jef- 
ferson's Names for the New States — The Government Undertakes 
to Survey the Western Lands — No "Tomahawk Rights" in the 
Northwest — Tlie Ordinance of 1783 — Struggles of Congress with 
the Slavery Question — Slave Representation Provided for — Opin- 
ions of Webster, Hoar, and Coole}' — Freedom of Religion; the 
Inviolability of Contracts ; a Permanent Union ; and the Encour- 
agement of Education — The Character of the Western System of 
Public Education — The Moving Force in Securing the Ordinance 
— The Ohio Company — Rufus Putnam — Schemes for Settlements 
in the Northwest — Failure of General Parsons — Manasseh Cut- 
ler's Success — Land Laws — Tlie Officers of the Northwest— The 
State of Ohio Planned in a Boston Tavern — Tlie Settlement of 
Marietta — Putnam's Discouragements — Arrival at the Mouth of 
the Muskingum — Tlie Town Named After Marie Antoinette — 
Pseudo classicism of the Day— Idealism of the Settlers — Governor 
St. Clair Arrives— Sketch of the New Governor — His Companions 
in Office — " The Governor and Judges," a Vicious Form of Gov- 
ernment — Patchwork Laws — Setting the Courts in Motion — The 
Scioto Purchase — A Bit of Lobbying — Colonel William Duer and 
His Associates — French Immigrants at Gallipolis — Joel Barlow 
Sells Lands in France — Financial Panic — Comparative Quiet at 
Marietta— Fort Harmar Built by Major Doughty — The Remnant 
of an Army Page 315 

CHAPTER X 

THE UNITED STATES "WIN TIIE NORTHWEST TOSTS 

The New Boundaries — President Washington Asserts the Power .of 
the United States— Joseph Brant Betakes Himself to Literary Pur- 
suits — Indians Relinquish Lands in the Northwest — White Settle- 
ments Make the Indians Uneasy — Savages Looking 'Westward 
— Lord Dorchester's Confidence— Captain Gother Mann Explores 
the Border — British Preparations to Build New Posts — Perils 
of the Ohio Passage — The Indians Burn a Prisoner — The Har- 
mar Campaign — A Motley Militia — Jealousy and Demoralization 
— A Disgraceful Defeat — Rufus Putnam's Advice — Dorchester 
Writes as to Indian Lands— Washington's Chagrin — St. Clair Se- 
lected to Command tlie Army— The Forces at Cincinnati — Bad 
Clothing. Bad Pa}', Bad Food— Discontent Presages Defeat— The 
St. Clair Disaster— Bravery of the Regulars— St. Clair's Share in 
the Blame— After the Battle— Washington's Anger— Mad Anthony 
Wayne— Drilling the Militia— Former Failures Serve as a Warn- 
ing—Indian Council at the Mouth of the Detroit— The Indian Ul- 



CONTENTS 

timatum — British Influence — Secretary Knox Orders the Advance 

— Fort Recovery — The Indian Respect for a Soldier — Wayne's 
Successful Campaign— Face to Face with the British — The Treaty 
of Greenville — John Jay Negotiates a Treaty with England — 
French and British Spoliations — Jay's Treaty Attacked — New 
Connecticut — The Surrender of Detroit Demanded and Refused 
— Lord Dorchester Issues Orders for the Surrender of the Posts 

— Washington Congratulated on Gaining the Northwest — Fort 
Miami Given Up to Ilamtramck — Captain Moses Porter Receives 
the Surrender of Detroit — Michilimackinac Evacuated— Compli- 
ments to the Retiring British Officers — Fort Niagara Occupied 
by the Americans — John Francis Ilamtramck at Detroit — General 
Wayne Visits the Posts — His Death at Presque Isle — Condition of 
Posts — The Advantageous Position of the British— Warnings of 
Coming War— Retrospect Page 345 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



FATHER MARQUETTE IN ST. IGNACE Frontispiece 

JACQUES CARTIER Facing p. 2 

THE MISSIONARY " 4 

TIIE NORTH SnORE, LAKE SUPERIOR " 8 

GRAND ARCH, PICTURED ROCKS, LAKE SUPERIOR . . " 14 

JAMES MARQUETTE, S. J " 22 

[From Trentanovo's statue in the Capitol at Washington] 

SLEEPING BEAR " 26 

ROBERT CAVELIER, SIEUR DE LA SALLE " 30 

[From a copper-plate by Van cler Gucht (1UD8). A purely ideal 
portrait] 

NAKED INDIANS IN MONTREAL " 42 

THE LANDING OF CADILLAC " 4G 

COUREUR DE BOIS " 52 

INDIAN nUNTER OF 1750 " GO 

SEBASTIAN CABOT " G4 

LAWRENCE WASHINGTON " 68 

WASHINGTON AS A SURVEYOR " 72 

GEORGE WASHINGTON " 84 

BRADDOCK'S HEADQUARTERS AT ALEXANDRIA, VA. . . " 92 

GENERAL EDWARD BRADDOCK " 94 

THE BURIAL OF BRADDOCK " 98 

BLOCK-HOUSE OF FORT DUQUESNE " 100 

GENERAL HENRY GLADWIN " 110 

MRS. IIENRY GLADWIN " 116 

THE BAFFLED CHIEFS LEAVING TIIE FORT " 118 

"ANOTHER PARTY PADDLED SWIFTLY TO THE ISLE 

AU COCHON" " 120 

XV 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

THE SIEGE OF THE FORT AT DETROIT Facing p. 124 

A LIGHT-INFANTRY SOLDIER OF THE PERIOD .... " 132 

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN " 142 

A FRENCH TRADER " 164 

DANIEL BOONE " 184 

SIMON KENTON " 192 

EDMUND BURKE " 202 

GRAVE OF DANIEL BOONE " 210 

GEORGE ROGERS CLARK " 216 

PATRICK nENRY " 218 

THOMAS JEFFERSON " 240 

OLD SPANISn TOWER " 258 

ARENT SCnUYLER DE PEYSTER " 2C4 

JOnN ADAMS " 282 

LORD SnELBURNE " 284 

nENRY LAURENS " 288 

A FUR-TRADER IN TnE COUNCIL TEPEE " 292 

THE COUREUR DE BOIS AND TnE SAVAGE " 296 

SIR GUY CARLETON " 802 

GEORGE WASHINGTON " 310 

RUFUS PUTNAM ) 

- " 330 

GENERAL RUFUS PUTNAM S LAND-OFFICE } 

MANASSEH CUTLER " 334 

GENERAL ARTnUR ST. CLAIR " 336 

SITE OF MARIETTA IN 17S3 " 338 

FORT nARMAR, BUILT IN I7S3 ) „.„ 

[ " 340 
CAMP MARTIUS, THE FIRST HOME OF THE PIONEERS . } 

PLANTING IN THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY .... " 344 

ST. CLAIR'S ADVANCE DISCOVERED " 354 

ANTHONY WAYNE " 358 

DRAWING-ROOM, WAYNE HOMESTEAD " 862 

WAYNE HOMESTEAD " 366 

JOHN JAY " 368 

GENERAL WAYNE'S GRAVE . . " 880 

xvi 



ILLUSTRATIONS 
MAPS 



MOLL'S MAP OF THE NORTHWEST IN 1720 Facing p. 38 

MAP OP THE NORTHWEST AS KNOWN TO THE ENGLISH 

IN 1753-G3 " 80 

FRENCH AND ENGLISH IN NORTH AMERICA, 1755 ... " 102 

EVANS'S MAP OF THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY " 168 

MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE HARMAR, ST. CLAIR, AND 

WAYNE CAMPAIGNS " 346 



INTRODUCTION 



France discovered and occupied the Northwest; but 
England included that region between the infinite par- 
allels bounding on the north and the south the colonies 
of Virginia, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. It was not 
until a full century after France had established her 
trade from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi that the 
English colonies, as their population increased, began to 
plan the occupation of the valley of the Ohio. Virginia, 
having crossed the Alleghanies, came into collision with 
France, and was driven back. England took up the 
quarrel on behalf of her colonial rights ; and at the end 
of the French and Indian War, New France — the pictu- 
resque, romantic, extravagant, squalid New France — dis- 
appeared from the map of North America. Next, Eng- 
land undertook to keep her own subjects from settling 
and civilizing the Northwest ; and for the annihilation 
of the British posts, the occupants of that country en- 
tered into the most far-reaching and destructive Indian 
conspiracy known to this land. No sooner were the 
savages subdued than the War of the Revolution led to 
the conquest of the Northwest by Virginia, and during 
eight years petty warfare was carried on by the Ind- 
ians and British against the Americans. Maryland 
conditioned her entrance into the confederation of the 



INTRODUCTION 

States upon the cession to the general government of 
the claims of the individual colonies to the Northwestern 
lands ; and the makers of the treaty of 1783 succeeded 
in drawing the boundary -lines of the new nation through 
the middle of the Great Lakes and of the Mississippi. 
Then the Congress of the Confederation gave to this 
first territorial expansion of the nation a charter of free- 
dom and progress never before equalled among men ; 
and under this Ordinance of 1787, New England men 
and ideas became the dominating force from the Ohio to 
Lake Erie. The advent of settlers brought about Indian 
wars, fought by the United States against savages fed, 
clothed, and armed by England, that nation having, for 
the purposes of its fur-trade, made excuse to retain the 
Northwestern posts. Under the provisions of the treaty 
of 1795, however, the posts were surrendered, and Great 
Britain retired across the border, there to nurse griev- 
ances that were to find vent in the War of 1812.. 

We have been accustomed to regard the Northwest as 
a wilderness that grew into civilization by some vital 
force within itself. Such, however, was far from being 
the case. The name of Michilimackinac was a familiar 
word in the cabinets of European monarchs before it 
was known to the people dwelling along the Atlantic ; 
the foundation of Detroit was decreed in the councils of 
France ; and the relations of the Jesuit missions in the 
Northwest were read eagerly even by the polite society 
of Paris. England, indeed, was comparatively ignorant 
of the Western country ; but Spain was not without am- 
bition to control its waterways. 

In our own land, the makers of the Republic were also 
the makers of the Northwest. In its defence Washing- 
ton first learned the art of war; Franklin realized its 
possibilities, and interested himself in its development; 



INTRODUCTION 

Patrick Henry planned with George Rogers Clark for 
its conquest ; John Jay and Franklin and John Adams 
drew about it the lines of the United States; Thomas 
Jefferson bestowed upon it the inestimable boon of free- 
dom ; Washington's chief of engineers led its first set- 
tlers; and Mad Anthony Wayne subdued its savage in- 
habitants, and received the surrender of its frontier 
posts. 

Many races united to people and to build up the 
Northwest ; and many interests were in conflict. The 
story is often one of warfare, of cruelty, and of barbar- 
ism ; but in writing it care has been taken to attribute 
no motives that were not clearly indicated. If it shall 
seem that the traditional hostility to England had been 
departed from, the excuse must be that during the period 
under consideration the representatives of that nation 
acted along the general lines of human nature ; and that 
the British governors and commandants, as a rule, were 
men of good ability, devoted to the interests of their 
government ; and not infrequently they did all they 
could to mitigate the barbarities of savage warfare. 
There were cruelties perpetrated on both sides; but 
the British government was to blame for ever employ- 
ing or even countenancing the use of savages in war- 
fare against the whites. 

The fact that England was in possession of the North- 
west during the greater portion of the period under 
consideration, makes it necessary to have recourse to 
the archives and other records of that nation. The 
Bouquet and Haldimand papers, in so far as they relate 
to the Western country, have been printed in full in 
the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, and 
all these papers have been calendared in the Canadian 
Archives under the efficient direction of Mr. Douglas 



INTRODUCTION 

Brymner. The later archives also have been calendared, 
and important portions of them have been printed. 

A year before his death the late Francis Parkman 
gave me permission to consult his unique collection of 
manuscripts now in the library of the Massachusetts 
Historical Society ; and through the courtesy of the 
secretary, Dr. S. A. Greene, I have frequently availed 
myself of the privilege. 

The descendants of General Henry Gladwin — the Rev- 
erend Henry Gladwin Jebb, of Firbeck Hall, Rother- 
ham, Yorkshire; R. D. de Uphaugh, Esq., of Holling- 
bourne House ; and the late Captain W. H. G. Gladwin, 
of Ilinchley Wood, Ashbourne, Derbyshire, England — 
have placed me under obligations by sending manu- 
script records, letters, and also portraits of General and 
Mrs. Gladwin. To Senator James McMillan I am in- 
debted for frequent courtesies in obtaining information 
from official sources both in this country and abroad. 
It is a pleasure to acknowledge repeated acts of kind- 
ness on the part of Mr. David Hutcheson and of Dr. 
Herbert Friedenwald, of the Library of Congress, in 
placing at my disposal the rare documents and manu- 
scripts in their respective departments ; and also tire 
constant courtesy of Mr. Andrew Hussey Allen and Mr. 
Stanislaus M. Hamilton, of the Department of State, in 
facilitating my researches among the Department man- 
uscripts. General F. C. Ainsworth, U. S. A., had made 
for me copies of documents in the War Department ; 
and I am indebted to him particularly for the diligent 
search that disclosed how great a destruction of official 
papers resulted from the burning of the public buildings 
in Washington by the British during the War of 1812. 
General A. W. Greeley, U. S. A., also placed at my dis- 
posal the valuable collections of rare documents which 



INTRODUCTION 

he is gathering for the library of the "War Department. 
Mr. Clarence M. Burton, of Detroit, whose collection of 
original documents relating to the Northwest is un- 
rivalled, and Mr. L. G. Stuart, of Grand Eapids, have 
afforded every assistance in their power. 

Chakees Mooee. 
"Washington, D.C., November 17, 1899. 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 



CHAPTER I 
THE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

From the meagre records of the intrepid fur -trader 
and the incidental allusions of the devoted missionary, 
one with difficulty pieces together the narrative of dis- 
covery along the Great Lakes. Often one catches 
glimpses of shadowy forms gliding among the whisper- 
ing pines, or sees afar off a swift darting canoe skim- 
ming over the clear waters, only to find that the name 
of the daring trader who has pushed into unknown 
regions has disappeared as completely as the print of 
his snow-shoe or the swirl of his paddle. Thus it hap- 
pens that the reputed explorers of the Northwest were 
not always the first who spied out the land ; but rather 
were those who were so fortunate as to leave some 
record of their adventures, either in the obscure and 
confused accounts written by the unlettered explorers 
themselves, or else in the scarcely less uncertain rela- 
tions of the state of the Church, compiled from letters 
and stray reports from those distant fields where the 
triumphs of the cross in the conversion of the heathen 
seemed of far more moment than the discovery of new 
countries. 

a l 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

It was in the year 1534 that Jacques Cartier, driv- 
ing his little fleet through the fogs of Newfoundland, 
steered up the unknown waters of the broad St. Law- 
rence. Eighty -one years later— so slow was progress 
westward— Champlain, the father of New France, was 
the first white man to look off across the dancing wa- 
ters of Lake Huron. By his side stood his interpreter 
£tienne Brule, dauntless woodsman and pioneer of pio- 
neers, as Parkman calls him. 1 We know that in the 
three years between the discovery of Lake Huron and 
1618, Brule's wanderings took him down the Susque- 
hanna to the Chesapeake Bay, and that he was the first 
to make that passage. Perhaps, also, his fleet canoe 
pushed its way northward even to Lake Superior. Be 
this as it may, he learned enough of that sea to tell the 
historian priest Sagard that beyond the Mer Douce 
(Lake Huron) there was another and a greater lake, 
which discharges itself into the lower one by rapids 
nearly two miles broad, called the Falls of Gaston; 2 
and that from the Mer Douce to the farther end of the 
great lake was four hundred leagues. 3 Moreover, Brule 
showed to Sagard an ingot of copper, which, he said, 
came from a deposit of that metal some eighty or one 
hundred leagues from the country of the Hurons. 
Brule did not profess to have found this copper, but 
said he obtained it from neighbors of the Hurons, when 
he and his companion Grenolle were on their travels. 4 
Whatever may be Brule's claims as a discoverer in 

1 Pioneers of France in the New World, p. 388, 377-380. 
* Named for a brother of Louis XIII. 

3 French estimates of distances almost invariably sire exaggerated. 

4 Sagard, IJistoire du Canada. Paris edition, 1865, vol. iii., p. 717. 
See also Narrative and Critical History of America, vol. iv., p. 165 ; 
and Winsor's Cartier to Frontenac, p. 123. 

2 




JAQUES CARTIEH 



THE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

the Northwest, we know that, during the same }'ear 
(1618) that he returned from his wanderings, there land- 
ed at Quebec the son of a Normandy letter-carrier who 
was destined to traverse western seas where no white 
man had been before him and where none came after 
him for a quarter of a century, Jean Nicolet, a native 
of Cherbourg, was, like Brule, a protege of Champlain. 
Following the custom of the time, the youth was sent 
to Allumette Island in the Ottawa, there to study Ind- 
ian languages and thus prepare himself for the work 
of an interpreter. 1 For sixteen years Nicolet served 
his apprenticeship among the Jesuit missions in the 
Huron country ; and during the years (1629-32) that 
Quebec was temporarily in possession of the British, 
he was sojourning at Lake Nipissing, where his happy 
disposition, his excellent memor}^, and his profoundly 
religious nature all combined to establish for him a 
wide-spread influence over the Algonquin Indians. He 
made their ways his ways ; he feasted with them in the 
days of their plenty, and he fasted with them during 
long weeks when roots and berries were their onty food. 
It was not strange, therefore, that Champlain, on his 
return to Quebec in 1633, sent for Nicolet, and bade 
him prepare to undertake an embassy to the Indians be- 
yond the Mer Douce, in order to induce them to join the 
Hurons in their annual voyages for traffic at Quebec. 
Doubtless this expedition was undertaken in the interest 
of the One Hundred Associates, that powerful monopoly 
which had been organized in 1627 to control the fur-trade 
of New France. On the first day of July, 1634, Nicolet 
started from Quebec, in company with the burly priest 



1 Benj. Suite, Melanges d'Hlstoire et de Litterature, Ottawa, 1876. 
Also Wisconsin Historical Collections, 1879. 

3 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Brebceuf, 1 who was bound for the Huron mission. Seat- 
ed in the canoes of the Indians who were returning 
from their annual market, voyageur and priest made 
the hard and tedious journey up the Ottawa and the 
chain of lakes and streams that in those days formed 
the wilderness route to the country and the lake of the 
Hurons. Leaving Brebceuf at the mission, Nicolet, 
with seven savages as boatmen, pushed northward, fol- 
lowing the curve of the shores until his light bark 
paused at the foot of the rapids of the strait that dis- 
charges the waters of Lake Superior. Returning, he 
passed through the Straits of Mackinac and was tossed 
on the billows of Lake Michigan. 

During the hazy September days Nicolet and his 
dusky companions skimmed over the glassy surface of the 
great lake that he had discovered, and at night camp 
was made on some jutting point with the thick forest at 
their backs, by way of security against sudden attack. 
Before snow fell the little company reached Green Bay, 
a body of water for many years thereafter known as the 
Lake of the Stinkards, 2 the name mistakenly applied 
by the French to the Indians who dwelt near its shores., 

Kicolet, well knowing the Indian love of finery, 3 had 

1 Fathers Jean de Brebceuf and Gabriel Lalemant were burned 
alive by the Iroquois, at the destruction of St. Ignace in the Huron 
country, March 16, 1649. For a detailed account of their martyrdom 
see Canadian ArcMces, 1884, p. lxvii. 

8 "The people of the sea" was the more correct name. The phrase 
had its origin in the ill-smelling water, supposed by the French to be 
the salt water of the sea. 

3 Parkman conjectures that Nicolet may have provided himself 
with a court dress for use in case he should penetrate to regions where 
Chinese mandarins were domiciled. Later writers have not always 
been careful to observe Parkman's " perhaps." My statement is less 
poetic, but certainly is within the bounds of probability. See La 
Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, p. xxiv. 

4 



THE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

provided himself with a robe of Chinese silk gayly 
wrought with flowers and birds of brilliant plumage. 
Arrayed in this fantastic garment and firing pistols to 
right and to left of him, the daring explorer seemed to 
the amazed Indians a veritable Son of Thunder; and 
they, in their turn, decked themselves in their richest 
furs to welcome so illustrious an ambassador. 1 The 
shrewd eyes of the representative of the fur-trade quick- 
ly told him that here was a people worthy of cultiva- 
tion ; and he neglected no opportunity to impress upon 
his attentive hosts the glories of France, the favor that 
the king was ready to bestow upon his red children, and 
the allurements of the St. Lawrence markets. In order 
to establish his hold upon them, he made his way up 
the Fox Eiver to the land of the brave Mascoutins ; and 
from the reports of the Indians he believed that he was 
then but three days' journey from the margin of the sea 
that separated the New World from Cathay, for more 
than a century the goal of all French adventurers in 
America. Had he ventured on, he must have reached 
not the ocean but the Mississippi, that great river the 
discovery of which was soon to fill the dreams alike of 
trader and of missionary. Satisfied with his achievements, 
however, he retraced his way, and in the spring of 1635 
he descended the St. Lawrence at the head of a richly 
laden fleet of canoes. For six years he continued to 
dwell at the frontier post of Three Rivers. Marrying a 
god-daughter of Champlain, he relapsed into quiet joys of 
family life ; and his acquaintance with the remote tribes 
and his unbounded popularity with the Indians were of 
decided advantage to his employers. In 1639 he went 
down to Quebec to be present at the marriage of his 



Viraont, Relation of 1643, p. 3. 
5 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

friend, the wagon-maker Joliet, whose son was destined 
to place his name first among French explorers. The 
same year (1642) that saw the birth of Louis Joliet also 
witnessed the death of Nficolet, who was drowned in 
the St. Lawrence while returning from Quebec, w T hither 
he went to save an Iroquois prisoner from the torture 
stake. He died as he had lived, a devoted son of the 
Church; and a fervent obituary notice in the Relation 
of the succeeding year bears witness to the high esteem 
in which he was held by the fathers, who as a rule had 
little cause to speak well of a fur-trader. 1 

"We turn now for a moment to a missionary enter- 
prise which, while it was indeed the voice of one crying 
in the wilderness, nevertheless fixed for all time the 
name of a place and of a great river. Six } f ears (1641) 
after the adventurous voyage of Nicolet, the two 
priests, Charles Raymbault and Isaac Jogues, accepted 
an invitation to accompany a party of Ojibwas on their 
return from the feast of the dead, which had been cele- 
brated in the Huron country with all the pomp and cir- 
cumstance that marked this as the most important of 
all the ceremonials of that nation/ Skirting the north- 
ern shores of Lake Huron, the quivering canoes were 
forced up the broad strait through which Lake Superior 
finds its outlet. Something of the solemn grandeur of 
this mighty stream must have impressed itself upon the 
minds of the priests as thejr gazed upon the multitude 

1 Vimont, Relation of 1643, p. 3. In vol. xi. of these most excel- 
lent publications of the Wisconsin Historical Society will be found 
Henri Jouan's article on Nicolet, translated by Grace Clark. This is 
followed by a Nicolet bibliography by Consul Willshire Bntterfield. 

2 Relation of 1642, p. 97. See also Shea's Catholic Church in Colo- 
nial Days, vol. i., p. 228. For a map and description of the Huron 
country, by Rev. Arthur E. Jones, S. J., see The Jesuits Relations 
and Allied Documents, edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites, vol. xxxiv. 

6 



THE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

of islands whose ragged rocks nature was struggling to 
hide under an all too scanty covering of green. Now 
great hills seemed completely to block the way ; then, 
with a sharp bend, the path would open straight before 
them as the river spread itself out in a shallow lake 
whose red bottom showed itself plainly through the 
clear waters. 

From the shores the autumn air, laden with the fra- 
grance of spruce, came like wine, bringing an exaltation 
to the senses. To the minds of the missionaries the 
rugged hills, pine-clad save here and there where a bald 
spot showed itself, and the deep, lonesome valleys must 
have presented a decided contrast to the carefully tend- 
ed slopes of their native France. Here was indeed the 
New World. And yet those rounded knobs of rock 
standing well back from the left bank of the river were 
to this earth what Adam was to the race. Before ever 
the waters had parted to let the dry land of the Old 
World appear, these Laurentian hills had lifted them- 
selves up to form the backbone of what we call the 
New World. Another bend and the hills melt away; 
low bluffs of clay easily confine the now quiet river, and 
the broad terraces are covered with waving grass and 
pleasing groves. Nature has changed her frown to the 
brightest of smiles, and far ahead the river breaks into 
laughter, showing its milk-white teeth in foaming rapids. 

Scattered over the sand}^ plateau beside the rush of 
waters were the huts of some two thousand Ojibwas 
and other Algonquins, allured thither by the white-fish 
that had their homes in pools behind the foam-making 
rocks. Willingly the curious savages listened to the 
new docrines of the black-gowns; but when the time' 
for their departure came, they bade no reluctant fare- 
well to the priests. As the ice began to form the mis- 

7 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

sionaries set out on their return journey — Raymbault 
going to a speedy death at Quebec, 1 and Jogues unwit- 
tingly entering the path that five years later led to 
martyrdom on the banks of the Mohawk. 2 They left 
behind them only the name St. Mary's, calling the place 
of their sojourn, as well as the falls and the river, after 
the Huron mission whence they came. 3 

The warfare that numbered Jogues among its victims 
was waged by the Iroquois with such stealth, such 
ferocity, and such far-reaching effects as to change the 
face of the Indian world. From Quebec to Lake Huron 
the Indian towns were burned and their inhabitants 
were driven even to the Mississippi, before they found 
a rest for the soles of their weary feet. Then, too, 
pestilence added its ravages to the scourge of the relent- 
less Iroquois. One by one the Jesuit missions in the 
Huron country succumbed to the onslaughts of the 
combined foes. 4 St. Joseph, St. Ignace, Ste. Marie, all 
fell to rise again beyond Lake Huron; and by the 
middle of the seventeenth century all that great stretch 
of country from the St. Lawrence to the Straits of Mackr 
inac was debatable territory, traversed alike by white 
man and red only at the constant risk of ambush and 
battle. 5 Had the French possessed the numerical strength 
of the English on the Atlantic coast, they might easily 
have annihilated the Iroquois; but in the year 1643 the 
entire population of New France numbered not to ex- 
ceed three hundred souls; whereas the four colonies of 
Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, 

1 Not at Sault Ste. Marie, as Winsor has it. See Cartier to Fron- 
tenac, p. 160. 2 Parkman, Jesuits in North America,^. 304, 

3 Relation of 1642. 

4 Parkman, The Jesuits in North America, p. 411, et seq. 

5 Radisson's Voyages, p. 88. 




THE NORTH SHORE, LAKE SUPERIOR 



THE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

banded together for self-defence, could count a popula- 
tion of 24,000. Thirty-two years later the Indian prob- 
lem had been settled for New England by the slaughter, 
in the battle that ended King Philip's War, of as many 
Indians as the Iroquois ever had on the war-path; 1 but 
for New France Indian warfare had only fairly begun. 

Naturally the rout of the Hurons put a stop for the 
time being to western exploration; so that it was not 
until 1657 that the work laid down by Nicolet was 
taken up by two of his compatriots, who like himself 
were residents of the trading-post of Three Rivers. In 
1641 Medard Chouart,' sixteen years old, coming from 
Brie, in France, had proceeded to the Jesuit missions of 
Lake Huron, where he became a lay assistant to the 
fathers. Later he served both as a soldier and as a pilot ; 
and he possessed, or was possessed by, the commercial 
instinct. A born trader, he so far succeeded that by 
the time he was twenty-six he owned enough land to 
assume and to maintain the title by which he is known 
to fame, that of Sieur des Grosseifliers.? The death of 

1 Fiske's Beginnings of Nero England, p. 225. 

2 For a sketch by Grosseilliers/see The Jesuit Relations and Allied 
Documents, vol. xxviii., p. 319. 

3 The narration of the adventures of Des Grosseilliers and Radisson 
is to be found in "Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson, being an account 
of his travels and experiences among the North American Indians 
from 1652 to 1684. Transcribed from the original manuscripts in the 
Bodleian Library and the British Museum. With historical illustra- 
tions and an introduction by Gideon D. Scull, England Boston- 
Published by the Prince Society. 1885." But 250 copies were print- 
ed. The manuscript, written by Radisson in semi-English, evidently 
is made up in part from notes jotted down during his travels and 
partly from memory. The compilation was made during his voyage 
to England in 1665, and the fact that it was intended for use at the 
English court accounts for that language. Radisson had learned Eng- 
lish during a visit to London in early youth. 

9 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Nicolet in 1642 must have revived in the conversations 
of the priests, as it did in the Relation of their Superior, 
the story of his exploits ; and during his stay in the 
Huron country Des Grosseilliers must have gained a 
general knowledge of the St. Mary's River as well as of 
the upper portions of Lakes Huron and Michigan. 

Among the traders at Three Rivers appeared, in May, 
1651, Peter Esprit Radisson, from St. Malo ; and before 
the youth had become accustomed to his new surround- 
ings he was captured by the Iroquois, during one of their 
daring raids on the French outpost. 1 Adopted by an 
Iroquois chief, Radisson was taken to Fort Orange 
(Albany) on a peace expedition ; and afterwards, escap- 
ing from his captors, he returned to the Dutch, who 
sent him to Holland, whence, in 1654, he made his way 
back to New France. Three years later he volunteered 
to go with other Frenchmen to the ill-fated mission at 
Onondaga, where he remained until that canton was 
abandoned on March 20, 1658. Returning to Three 
Rivers, Radisson found there his brother-in-law," Des 
Grosseilliers, who had but recently returned from an ex- 
pedition to the Huron countiy, and who was eager to 
explore the great lakes, of which he had heard so much 
from the Indians. No sooner was the project explained 
to Radisson than he " longed to see himself in a boat." 
A large party was organized, and in June they started 

1 Radisson was captured while limiting, aud during bis life among 
the Iroquois he became much attached to his foster mother, sisters, aud 
brother. His narrative of his capture, his escape, recapture and re- 
turn to the Iroquois village, aud his final successful desertion shows 
how readily a Frenchman took to savage life. 

2 Des Qrosseilliers's first wife was Ilelene, a daughter of that Abra- 
ham Martin for whom the Plains of Abraham were named. She died 
in 1651, and three years later Des Grosseilliers married Radissou's sister, 
Margaret Hayet. 

10 



THE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

up the Ottawa, only to run into an ambush of Iroquois. 
The twenty-nine other Frenchmen in the expedition, in- 
experienced and timid, decided that a path was not 
worth following when it led through the midst of such 
wary enemies; and the two brothers-in-law were left to 
pursue their westward way with Indians alone for com- 
panions. Just where the voyage took the adventurous 
Frenchmen is a matter of great doubt, so confused is 
Radisson's narrative. He claims that they made the 
circuit of Lake Huron ;' but the probability is that they 
simply coasted along the shores of Georgian Bay, arriv- 
ing at the Manitoulin Islands. 2 Thence they passed 
through the Straits of Mackinac, and spent the winter 
near the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan and in 
the vicinity of Green Bay. Possibly they reached the 
western end of Lake Superior; probably they wandered 
about among the head- waters of the streams that flowed 
westward into the Mississippi. 

" We weare," says Radisson, " 4 moneths in our voy- 
age w th out doeing any thing but goe from river to river. 
We mett severall sorts of people. We conversed w th 
them, being long time in alliance w th them. By the 
persuasion of some of them we went into ye great river 

1 Voyages, p. 145. Portions of the Third and Fourth Voyages are 
to be found in vol. xi. of the Wisconsin Historical Collections. The 
full and careful notes are by Mr. Reuben G. Thwaites, whose chro- 
nology seems to me in the main satisfactory. I do not think it is 
probable, however, that Radisson reached Lake Superior on his first 
voyage northward. Mr. Campbell's article on "Radisson and Gros- 
seilliers," in the American Historical Eeview, January, 1896, gives the 
various theories advanced, but his conclusion that but one northern 
voyage was made, which voyage ended in 1600, seems to me improb- 
able, 

- Had they made the circuit of the lake, men! ion of River Si. Clair 
and Saginaw Bay would not have been omitted. 

11 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

that divides itselfe in 2, where the hurrons w th some 
Ottanake and the wild men (Indians) that had warrs 
\v th them had retired. There is not great difference in 
their language as we weare told. This nation have 
warrs against those of forked river. It is so oaUed be- 
cause it has 2 branches, the one towards the west, the 
other towards the South, which, we believe, rutins tow- 
ards Mexico, by the tokens they gave us." 1 

Now the Relation of 1659 60 says that an Indian, 
Asatanik by name, set out in the June of 165$ from the 
Bay des Pnants (Green Bay) and wintered on Lake Su- 
perior, so called because it is above the Lake of the 
llurons, into which it Bows by a fall. 8 . From Lake Su- 
perior the Indian went to Hudson Bay, Returning to 
Quebec the writer of the Relation found two French- 
men just returned from those upper countries with three 
hundred canoes laden with peltries; they said they had 
passed the winter on Lake Superior," a mono- the llurons 
of the Tobacco Nation, who had retreated before the 
Iroquois, " across mountains and over rocks, through 
the depths i>( vast unknown forests, and at length had 
happily arrived at a beautiful river, large, wide, deep, 
and resembling (the Indians say) our great river St. 
Lawrence." 

The confused and obscure statements in Radisson's 
narrative, coupled with the passage quoted from the 
Relation of L660, have been made the basis of the sur- 

1 Voyages, pp. 167-68. 

• I!, lation of 1659, p. -10, ei seq. For an English translation of this 
passage and others relating t.> lake history, see Smith's History of Wis- 
consin, vol. iii. (Madison. LS 

s • • lis out hiuerne sur les riuages du lac Superior." We know 
from the Journal of the .lesuits that Grosseilliers returned at this 
time. But the statement that he tci/tt<.ral on Lake Superior is in- 
exaet. 

10 



THE FRE\< FI OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

mises 1 of some writers and the assertions of others that 
the two French explorers reached the Mississippi River 
and were the real discoverers of that stream. 2 On the 
other hand, it has been maintained with equal positive- 
ness not only that Des Grosseilliers and Radisson never 
saw the great river, but that they made only a single 
voyage to the northwest, returning in 1660. The nar- 
rative of the first journey is treated as a pure fabrica- 
tion on Radisson's part. 3 Happily the fewest difficulties 
attend the theory that in the main Radisson wrote 
truthfully; and that such errors as are to be found in 
his accounts are doubtless due to the natural confusion 
occasioned by trying to supplement meagre field notes 
by recollections called from an untrained memory. It 
is possible, also, that in the course of two centuries some 
parts of the manuscript may have been transposed, thus 
creating on the printed page of to-day errors not proper- 
ly chargeable to the writer.. 4 

Probably Radisson and his companions reached some 
of the streams that flow into the Mississippi ; and un- 
doubtedly they heard from the Indians vague accounts 
of the river itself, just as their immediate successors 

1 Winsor, Gartier to Frontenac, p. 186. 

2 Reuben G. Thwaites, Wisconsin Historical Collections, vol. xi., p. 
64, note. 

3 Henry Colin Campbell. "Radisson and Grosseilliers," in American 
ITistorical Review, January, 1896. 

4 Introduction to Radisson's Voyages, p. 13. The Radisson manu- 
scripts covering the period from 1652 to 1664 were presented by 
Samuel Pepys, of diary fame, who was Secretary of the Admiralty to 
Charles II. and James II. Mr. Scull conjectures that Pepys received 
the papers from Sir George Carteret, Treasurer of the Navy, for 
whom Radisson copied them out in order that they might be brought 
before Charles II. Pepys's papers were sold to various tradesmen for 
wrapping-paper, but were found and reclaimed by Richard Rawlin- 
son. 

13 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

learned of it. Even admitting that they reached the 
Mississippi, they did not claim the great discovery, nor 
did their accounts point the way to other explorers.' 
Their thoughts and ambitions were directed northward 
towards Hudson Bay ; and they left to those who came 
after them the discovery and mapping of the great 
waterway. To the student of Northwestern history, 
however, the name of Radisson is of prime importance, 
beoause he was the first explorer to describe what he- 
saw on his travels along the boundaries of that region. 
Having returned in safety from a highly profitable 
trip to Lake Michigan, Des Grosseilliers and Radisson 
were naturally anxious to explore Lake Superior; but 
they decided to postpone their voyage till the next 
year. Meanwhile, Father Rene Menard, feeling upon 
his conscience the sins of the heathen, embraced an op- 
portunity to return with the Indians who had come 
down with the two Frenchmen. 9 The tale of Father 
Menard's perilous journey is one of many relations of 
self-sacrifice ending in tragic death, that give pathos to 

1 Winsor saj r s that there is no question that Grosseilliers wintered 
on the shores of Lake Superior in 1658-59, and that he was joined by 
Radissou on the St. Lawrence during the hitter year. Evidently Mr. 
Winsor prefers to take Suite's chronology rather than undertake to 
construct one on the basis of Radisson's statements. I think, how- 
ever, thai any one who will take the pains to make himself familiar 
with Radisson's writings will come to the conclusion that he was 
essentially truthful. In his younger days at least he had a tender 
heart and a real love of wild life. Mr. Gilbert Parker, in his novel 
Tlw Trail of the Sword, uses the name of Radisson in connection with 
a renegade, manifestly an unjust act towards a mau after Mr. Parker's 
own heart, did he but know it. The detailed statements of Radissou 
as to the occurrences between his firal and second northwestern voy- 
ages are not to be ignored. 

J Winsor falls into the error of supposing that Menard returned 
with Grosseilliers, whereas the latter did not start back until 1061. 

14 




GBANS ARCH, PICTUBKD BOCKS, LAKE sUI'EKIOR 



THE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

the story of New France. On August 27, 1060, he set 
out to "follow the Algonquins even to the middle of the 
lake of the maritime nation and of Lake Superior." 1 
The trip, tedious enough at best, was made irksome to 
the last degree by the hard labor at the paddle and on 
the portage put upon the aged father by Indians made 
lazy and indolent by the recent debaucheries of the fur- 
market. Yet in due time the party reached the upper 
lake, and began the voyage along its southern shores. 
Almost the first night out a falling tree demolished the 
canoe assigned to Father Menard and his companion, 
Jean Guerin; and in this dilemma all but three of their 
Indian friend- deserted them." For days their only 
food was begged from passing red men ; but at length a 
party of friendly Indians came to their rescue, and thus 
they were able to reach Keweenaw Bay, 3 where the 
mission was to be established by building the usual 
bark chapel. Pathetic indeed is the recital of the good 
old father, who quickly forgot the pains and perils of 
the journey in the ecstatic pleasure of celebrating the 
mass and in bringing the ministrations of the Church to 
the sick and dying heathen. Had Father Menard's 
mind turned more to the things of this earth, the long- 
letters he sent back must have contained the first de- 
scriptions of the wondrous beauty of the southern shore 
of Lake Superior; but instead we have the recital of 
suffering and disappointment borne bravely for the 
Master's sake. Then the letters come to a sudden end. 

1 Relation of 1659-60, p. 147. 

2 Lalemant, Relations of 1663 and 1664. 

8 Menard named the waters St. Theresa's Bay, having arrived on 
her day. Shea places the site of this mission at Old Village Point, 
on Keweenaw Bay, about seven miles north of the present town of 
L'Ause {History of the Catholic Church in Colonial Days, p. 263). 

15 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

On the tenth day of August, 1661, after nearly a year 
of fruitless labors, Father Menard set out for a wilder- 
ness journey to the south, and either lost himself and 
perished from starvation or else was murdered by those 

he sought to save. 1 

During the same month that Father Menard laid 
down his life for the heathen, Des Grosseilliers and 
Radisson, having eluded the vigilance of the governor 
who had demanded the right to send two of his servants 
with them and to share the profits, started on a second 
northern journey. It is in Radisson's narrative of this 
trip that we find the first detailed descriptions of any 
portion of the present State of Michigan. Having 
reached the mouth of St. Mary's River, they began to 
ascend that beautiful stream. " We came after to a 
rapid that makes the separation of the lake of the hur- 
rons, that we calls Superior, or upper, for that ye wild- 
men hold it to be longer and broader, besides a great 
many islands, which maks appeare in a bigger extent. 
This rapid was formerly the dwelling of those with 
whom wee weare, and consequently we must not aske 
them if they knew where they have layed. Wee made 
cottages 3 at our advantages, and found the truth of 
what those men had often (said), that if once we could 
come to that place we should make good cheare of a 
fish that they call Assichmack, which signifyeth a white 

. Shea, following the researches of Rev. Edward £«££*£ 
that Menard reached Vieux Desert the source of th 'W^onsmjp. 
2(W Henry Colin Campbell, in his monograph on Fathe Menard, 
ptbiislS by the Parian Club of Milwaukee, has traced, wife all pos- 
sible definiteness, the steps of the good priest's journeys , 

* Baron Dubois d'Avangour was governor at tins time, lracy, 
Courcelles, and Talon began their reign .n 1665. 
3 Radian uses the phrase " made cottages," as we say made 

camp." 



THE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

fish. The bear, the castors (beavers), and the Oriniack 
(moose) showed themselves often, but to their cost; in- 
deed it was to us like a terrestrial paradise — after so 
long fasting, after so great paines yt we had taken (to) 
finde ourselves so well by chossing our dyet, and rest- 
ing when we had a mind to it; 'tis here that we must 
tast with pleasure a sweet bitt. We doe not aske for a 
good sauce ; its better to have it naturally — it is the way 
to distinguish the sweet from the bitter." ' 

But the season was so far spent that the voyageurs 
were forced to leave their terrestrial paradise and its 
whitefish to "the cursed Iroquoits"; yet for very shame 
they were impelled " to give thanks to the river, to the 
earth, to the woods and to the rocks that stayes the 
fish." For days, when sky and water and coast-line im- 
perceptibly melted one into the other in the blue haze, 
they paddled leisurely along the southern shore of Lake 
Superior. On the banks of the streams they found 
pieces of copper, some of which weighed as much as a 
hundred pounds; and the Indians pointed out a great 
hill of that metal, but deterred the incredulous explor- 
ers from proving the truth of their story by saying that 
even larger deposits lay beyond. 

With mingled wonder and delight they skirted coasts 
that nature had made pleasant alike " to the eye, the 
sperit and the belly," until they came to those remark- 
able plains of shifting sand early named the Grand Sables. 
" As we went along we saw banckes of sand so high that 
one of our wildmen went upp for curiositie ; being there, 
did show no more than a crow. That place is most 
dangerous when there is any storme, being no landing 

1 Voyages, p. 187. Had Raclisson visited the Sault on bis first voy- 
age, as has been beld, be would not have been likely to speak of it 
so minutely in the relation of his second journey. 
b 17 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

place so long- as the sandy banckesare under water; and 
when the wind blowes, that sand doth rise by a strange 
kind of whirlings that are able to choake the passengers. 
One day you will see 50 small mountains att one side ; 
and the next day, if the wind changes, on the other 
side. This putts me in mind of the great and vast 
wilderness of Turkey land, as the Turques makes their 
pilgrimages." ' 

Pursuing their course they " came to a remarquable 
place. Its a banke of Rocks that the wild men made a 
sacrifice to; they calls it Nanitouckfinagoit, which signi- 
fies the likenesse of the devil. They fling much tobacco 
and other things in veneration. It is a thing most in- 
credible that the lake should be so boisterous that the 
waves of it should have the strength to doe what I have 
to say by this my discours: first, that it's so high and 
soe deepe yt it's impossible to claime up to the point. 
There comes many sorte of birds yt makes there nest 
here, the goilants, which is a Avhite sea-bird of the big- 
nesse of a pigeon, which makes me believe what ye wild- 
men told me concerning the sea to be neare directly to 
ye point. It's like a great Portall by reason of the 
beating of the waves. The lower part of that opening 
is as big as a tower, and grows bigger in going up. 
There is, I believe, six acres of land. Above it a ship 
of 500 tuns could passe by, soe bigg is the arch. I gave 
it the name of the portall of St. Peter, because my name 
is so called, and that I was the first Christian that ever 
saw it. 2 There is in place caves very deepe, caused by 

1 Bela Hubbard, writing of a voyage to Lake SuDerior that he made 
in 1840, gives a very graphic description of " the grand and leafless 
Sables." See Memorials of Half a Century. 

' 2 Radisson did not know of Menard's voyage. With this descrip- 
tion compare that of General Cass in Smith's Life of Leiois Cass. 

18 



THE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

the same violence. We must look to ourselves and take 
time with our small boats. The coast of rocks is 5 or 6 
leagues, and there scarce a place to putt a boat in as- 
surance from the waves. When the lake is agitated 
the waves goeth in these concavities with force and 
make a most horrible noise, most like the shooting of 
great guns." 

It is strange that in so extended a description of the 
Pictured Rocks, Radisson has omitted all notice of the 
one feature that gives to them their present name — the 
brilliant colors produced on the surface of the rocks by 
the exuding of mineral paints. 

Coming to what are now known as the Huron Islands, 
Radisson looked upon their beauties and because " there 
be 3 in triangle," he called them " of ye Trinity." Wait- 
ing for fair weather, the Frenchmen sailed across Ke- 
weenaw Bay to the mouth of Portage River, and were 
surprised to find there meadows squared and smooth as 
a board, the work of the beavers, which industrious ani- 
mals had cut the trees and flooded many a square mile 
of territory. 1 The explorers broke through the beaver 
dams, and at last came to " a trembling ground " over 
which they dragged their boats. " The ground became 
trembling by this means: the castors drowning great 
soyles with dead water, herein grows mosse which is 2 
foot thick or there abouts, and when you think to goe 
safe and dry, if you take not good care you sink downe 
to your head or to the middle of your body. When 
you are out of one hole you find yourselfe in another. 
This I Speake by experience, for I myself have bin 
catched often. But the wild men warned me, which 



1 Those who are familiar with the outlet of Portage Lake will notice 
how accurate this description is. 

19 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

saved me ; that is, that when the mosse should break 
under, I should cast my whole body into the water on 
sudaine — I must with my hands hold the mosse, and 
go like a frogg, then to draw my boat after me. There 
was no danger." 

Gloomy Portage Lake passed, they came to the car- 
riage, where is now the government ship-canal. There 
they found the way " well beaten because of the comers 
and goers, who by making that passage shortens their 
passage by 8 days by tourning about the point that goes 
very farr in that great lake ; that is to say, 5 to come to 
the point and 3 for to come to the landing of that place 
of carriage." They were told that a league from the 
end of Keweenaw Point was an island all of copper, and 
that from this island, when one was " minded to thwart 
it in a faire and calme weather, beginning from sun 
rising to sun sett, they come to a great island (Isle 
Royale) from which they come the next morning to 
firme lande on the other side." 

Pursuing their westward way, the two Frenchmen 
reached the Chequamegon Bay and wintered among 
the tribes gathered from the four points of the compass 
to dwell for a season beside the abundant fisheries of 
the greatest of lakes. From the east came the nations 
of the Sault, to regale themselves with " sturgeons of a 
vast bigness, and Pycts of seaven foot long. ,, From 
the west the Nadoneseronons (Sioux) appeared, each 
warrior accompanied by his two wives bearing oats and 
corn, garments of buffalo fur and " white castor" skins; 
and following the first embassy came a deputation of 
young men with " incredible pomp " that reminded 
Radisson of the entrance of the Polanders into Paris, 
" save that they had not so many Jewells, but instead 
of them they had so many feathers." From the south 

20 



THE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

came old friends from Green Bay, whom they had met 
during their first voyage, and who now gave them warm 
greetings. Best of all, from the north came the Christi- 
nos, who filled the willing ears of the Frenchmen with 
tales of the immense riches in furs of the lands about 
Hudson Bay. 

Returning in 1662 with a rich harvest of peltries, the 
enterprising brothers-in-law were promptly arrested for 
presuming to trade without a license ; Des Grosseilliers 
was made a prisoner, and of the £46,000 worth of furs 
they brought back £24,000 was taken for fines and 
dues, to show for which they were to have the empty 
honor of putting their coat of arms above the fort at 
Three Rivers which was to be built from the proceeds 
of the confiscated property. 1 So ungrateful was their 
own government towards these self-sacrificing but ex- 
ceeding thrifty explorers that they found a way to 
transfer their allegiance to England and, by the favor 
of Prince Rupert, to lay the foundations of that vast 
and wealthy monopoly, the Hudson Bay Couipanj\ 

While Des Grosseilliers and Radisson were enduring 
the privations and enjoying the feasts among the Lake 
Indians, fragments of Menard's letters found their way 
to Quebec, and the blood of this martyr speedily became 
the seed of missions at Sault Ste. Marie, at Ashland, and 
at Green Bay. It fell to the lot of Father Claude Al- 
louez to take up the work of " this great and painful 
mission." It was early in the September of 1665 that 
Allouez entered upon the broad expanse of the upper 
lake, to which he gave the name of his patron, " Mon- 

1 Voyages, p. 241. In vol. ii., No 5, of the publications of the Michi- 
gan Political Science Association, I have discussed more fully the 
claims of Radisson and Des Grosseilliers as the discoverers of Lake 
Superior. 

21 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

sieur Tracy." l Passing the scene of Menard's labors, he 
came to Chequamegon Bay, where he built a chapel of 
bark and set up the altar of his church, naming his mis- 
sion La Pointe d'Esprit. During his frequent mission- 
ary journeys he came upon the wandering Sioux, who 
told him of their home towards the great river " Mes- 
sepi," of their prairies abounding in game of all kinds, 
of their fields of tobacco, and of a still more remote 
tribe beyond whose home the earth is cut off by a great 
lake whose waters are ill-smelling like the sea. 

After two years of wandering and teaching, Allouez 
returned to Quebec on the third day of August, 1667; 
yet so great was his zeal that after but forty -eight hours 
of civilization he plunged again into the wilderness. 
His importunate appeals for laborers to enter fields 
white for the harvest called into service Father James 
Marquette, who in 1668 established himself at Sault 
Ste. Marie, and there began a permanent mission that 
became the first white settlement within the present 
borders of Michigan. When Allouez was called to 
Green Bay in 1669, Marquette moved on to La Pointe 
d'Esprit, leaving in his place at the Sault Father Claude 
Dablon, in whose writings we find the first mention of 
the Ontonagon copper region, whence a hundred-pound 
fragment of ore had been brought to him in 1767, and 
which he himself visited a few years later. 2 

1 Alexander de Prouville, Marquis de Tracy, lieutenant-general. 

2 The French speak of "mines" of copper, and the word is often 
transferred into English. It should be translated " deposits." There 
were copper mines in the Lake Superior region, but they were the 
work of the Mound-builders, and were not known to the Indians. I have 
tried to connect the once famous Ontonagon copper bowlder, now in 
the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, with the work of the "i a- 
cieut miners." Se« Smithsonian Institution publications, National 
Museum report for 1895, pp. 1021-1030. 

22 




JAMES MARQUETTE, S. J. 



THE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

To Marquette at La Pointe came the Illinois Indians 
from the south, who excited his imagination to as great 
an extent as the Christinos from the north had excited 
the imaginations of Grosseilliers and Radisson, and with 
a correspondingly momentous result. " When the Illi- 
nois come to La Pointe," says Marquette, " they pass a 
great river almost a league in breadth. It flows from 
north to south, and so far that the Illinois, who know 
not the use of the canoe, have never so much as heard 
of the mouth." An Illinois youth who acted as in- 
structor in language to Marquette told the priest that 
he had seen Indians from the south who were loaded 
down with glass beads, thus proving that they had 
trafficked with the whites. That the great river emptied 
itself in Virginia seemed to Marquette hardly proba- 
ble; he was inclined to believe that its mouth was in 
California. At any rate he was determined to secure 
the company of a white companion, and, with his Indian 
boy as interpreter, to navigate the river as far as possi- 
ble, to visit the nations who lived along its banks in order 
to prepare the way for the fathers of the Church, and 
to obtain a perfect knowledge of the sea either to the 
south or to the west. 

Before starting on the journey that was to make im- 
mortal his name and that of his companion, Marquette 
all unwittingly must needs prepare the place of his 
burial. It so happened that in the dispersion of the 
Hurons by the Iroquois, a remnant of the Tobacco 
Nation dwelling south of Georgian Bay had taken 
refuge first on the island of Michilimackinac, celebrated 
for its fishing. After a stay scarcely longer than that 
of a modern tourist, the Indians fled from their relentless 
pursuers first to Green Bay and then to La Pointe, 
where they dwelt in peace for several years, until by 

23 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

ill chance they incurred the hostility of the Sioux. 
This most chivalrous nation first returned to Marquette 
the images he had given to them, and then began a 
vigorous warfare on the Hurons. In the progress of 
hostilities the prisoners were burned so freely as to 
carry consternation to the dispirited Hurons, who quick- 
ly abandoned their homes and well- tilled fields and, 
returning to the Straits of Mackinac, established them- 
selves on the north side of that passage. To his new mis- 
sion Marquette — for he had followed his fleeing flock — 
gave the name of St. Ignace, and so the place is known 
to this day. There the Indians filled his chapel every 
day, 1 singing praises to God with such devotion as to 
move even the French coureurs des hois who congregated 
at this gateway of Indian travel ; and there the zealous 
father inspired in his savage converts a degree of affec- 
tion that all too soon found its last manifestation in the 
weird journey to discover his body and with wild grief 
to bring it back to sepulchre beneath the chapel in 
which he had so patiently instructed them. 

While Marquette was still at La Pointe a picturesque 
if not important ceremony had taken place at Sault Ste. 
Marie. On the 14th day of June, 1671, Simon Francois 
Daumont, Sieur Saint Lusson, as the representative of 
the ambitious Intendant, Talon, erected on the crest of 
the hill overlooking the broad expanse of lake and the 
dashing rapids of the river a cedar cross bearing the 
arms of France; and in sounding phrase 2 he assumed 
for his king authority over those unknown lands from 

1 Dablon, Relations of 1671 and 1672. A full account of Marquette's 
wanderings is given by Dablon. 

2 Saint Lusson's proems- verbal is given in the Wisconsin Historical 
Collections, vol. xi., p. 26. Bancroft, Parkrnan, and Winsor all devote 
considerable attention to this ceremony. 

24 



THE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

the North Sea to the south and westward to seas the 
substance of things hoped for. Among the little group 
of Frenchmen who represented civilization and Louis 
XIV. before the thousands of Indians whom the inde- 
fatigable Perrot had gathered at the Sault was a young 
man who had left the quiet paths of philosophy and 
had turned aside from the strait ways of the Church 
eagerly to pursue the hazardous and exciting life of the 
fur-trader and explorer. This was not Louis Joliet's 
first visit to the Lake Superior country. In 1668 he 
had been sent thither by Talon to discover the copper 
deposits of which the Jesuit fathers said so much ; and 
failing in the attempt — as those who came after him for 
two centuries failed — he had returned to the St. Law- 
rence by the St. Clair and Detroit rivers and by Lake 
Erie, the discovery of which water\va}^s alone would 
have given his name a place in history had he left record 
of his achievement. Joliet was an explorer after Talon's 
own heart — he could live off the country and pay him- 
self by traffic in peltries, while he was carrying the flag 
of France into new regions. It is no wonder, then, that 
to the zeal of the Church, as represented by Marquette, 
Talon added the enterprise of the state incarnate in 
Joliet, for the discovery of that western river — forgotten 
since the days of De Soto — the navigation of which 
should realize the extravagant claims of Saint Lusson. 

Setting out from St. Ignace on May 17, 1673, priest 
and trader pushed their canoes across the northern end 
of Lake Michigan to the mission at Green Bay, thence 
up the Fox, across Lake Winnebago, and by portage to 
the Wisconsin, down which stream they floated until on 
June 17th their light canoes were caught and whirled 
along by the on-rushing Mississippi, thus accomplishing 
a discovery that, in the words of Bancroft, " changed 

25 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

the destin} T of nations," At the mouth of the Arkan- 
sas they turned about, being persuaded that the river 
flowed into the Gulf of Mexico. The return was by 
way of the Illinois River and Lake Michigan. Marquette 
rested at his mission of St. Ignace, leaving Joliet to 
descend to Quebec with the news of the complete suc- 
cess of their enterprise. 

Assigned to the Green Bay mission, Marquette felt 
the conversion of southern Indians so heavily on his 
conscience that he secured permission to return to them; 
and in the winter of 1674 he built and furnished a bark 
chapel in the town of the Kaskaskias. The seeds of 
disease were in his system, however, and he was seized 
with a longing to die among his brethren and his de- 
voted flock at St. Ignace. Assisted by two canoemen, 
he worked his way north to the foot of Lake Michigan 
and skirted its sandy shores. On the night of May 19, 
1675, he made camp near the wild and lonely promon- 
tory of the Sleeping Bear ; the evening was spent in 
prayer, and as midnight approached his strength failed. 
With the music of the lapping waves in his ears and the 
names of Jesus and Mary on his lips, at the parting of the 
days, the gentle spirit of the great discoverer journeyed 
to the undiscovered country. Tenderly his faithful boat- 
men buried him in the white sands, and two years later 
a band of Ottawas found his body and bore it to St. 
Ignace. There, under the chapel he had built, the bones 
of " the guardian angel of the Ottawa missions" reposed 
for two full centuries, until a member of his order found 
them under the ashes of the church and marked their 
resting-place. 1 

1 Shea's History of the Catholic Church in Colonial Days, p. 319. 
We are accustomed to thiDk of Marquette as a man well along in 
years. He was but thirty-eight years old when he died ; but he had 

26 




I 



f 



THE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

Meantime, Joliet, after a short stay at Sault Ste. 
Marie, returned to Quebec to spread the news of the 
discovery of the Mississippi and to incite the ambitious 
Talon to fresh enterprises for the spread of the king's 
domain. The way was now open and the man was at 
hand. 

On a bright August morning, in the year 1679, a well- 
rigged vessel of some forty-five tons rode easily at anch- 
or under the lee of one of the beautiful islands that 
dot the green waters at the head of Lake Erie. From 
the vessel's decks five small guns threatened the peace- 
ful shores ; and on the morning breeze that blew lazily 
over lonely promontory and wooded waste, over Indian 
lodge and the haunt of wild deer, rose and fell the 
soft white folds of a flag that bore the lilies of France 
shining solitary in the wilderness. 1 

Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, as he paced 
the quarter-deck of his little ship that August morning, 
was at the height of his fortunes. Not only did he 
bear the royal commission to establish a line of forts 
along the Great Lakes, whereby to hold for France all that 
rich fur country, but he had also in his possession letters 
signed by the powerful King Louis XIV., granting to 
him large concessions in the matter of the profitable 
trade in beaver-skins. 

On the sharp prow of his vessel La Salle had placed 
the roughly carved figure of a griffin, a symbol chosen 
from the armorial bearings of his friend and supporter, 
Count Frontenac, governor-general of the French pos- 

beeu a priest for twenty-one years. In 1877, Father Jacker discovered 
Marquette's remains beneath the mission chapel burned in 1705 — not 
in 1700, as Shea has it. Compare Shea, p. 319, with p. 622. 

1 Park man's La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West and 
Louis Hennepin's Travels are the authorities for this voyage. 

27 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

sessions in the New World ; and as he watched his ship 
take shape on the banks of the Niagara River, he had 
fondlj r stroked the head of the monster, swearing to 
make the griffin fly above the crows. By this oath he 
meant that in his purposes of trade and exploration he 
would not allow himself to be thwarted by the Jesuits, 
who claimed the Indians for their inheritance and who 
were bent on making the uttermost parts of this new 
earth their exclusive possession. Such pious purposes, 
the Jesuits foresaw, must come to nothing, if once the 
brandy of the fur-traders and the free-and-easy life of 
the coureurs de hois should gain a footing among the 
savages. 

La Salle, on the other hand, looked forward to a chain 
of forts and trading-posts stretching from Quebec along 
the Great Lakes and thence down the Mississippi to its 
mouth. At these posts the rich furs of the north and 
the valuable buffalo hides of the prairies should be 
gathered for shipment to France. With the Mississippi 
an open pathway to Europe, there would be no need of 
the long voyage across the tempestuous Erie and On- 
tario, frozen during half the year and guarded perpetu- 
ally by the blood-thirsty Iroquois, friends of the Eng- 
lish and enemies of the French and their allies, the 
Ilurons. 

In order to carry out his plans of trade and explora- 
tion, La Salle had built the Griffin and had gathered a 
crew of four and thirty men. Behind at Montreal his 
clamorous creditors, urged on by his commercial rivals, 
were already in possession of his estate ; but before him 
were untold riches in beaver-skins, and beneath his feet 
was the stanch vessel whose single voyage should bring 
him profits sufficient to pay every debt and yet leave 
him fortune enough to pursue those schemes of explora- 

28 



TEE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

tion which for years had filled his thoughts by day and 
his dreams by night. 1 

Born of a wealthy and honorable Eouen family, La 
Salle in his youth had joined the Society of Jesus ; but 
finding himself more inclined to lead than to follow un- 
questioningly the directions of others, he had left the 
Jesuits, and at the age of twenty-three had sailed for 
America, whither his brother, the Abbe Jean Cavelier, 
had preceded him. His first establishment, nine miles 
above Montreal, afterwards received in derision the 
name of La Chine, because of La Salle's failure to find 
a path to China by way of the Mississippi. In these 
later days, this name of ridicule has been made good 
by the passage across La Salle's old possessions of 
the Canadian Pacific railway, England's new way to 
China. 

La Salle, keenly ambitious, straightforward in all his 
dealings, and reserved in the expression of his feelings, 
was one of those men who keep their ej'es fixed so 
steadfastly on the goal that they take no pleasure in the 
running. For this reason he had little in common with 
the Kecollect priest who made one of the company on 
board the Griffin. In the make-up of Father Louis 
Hennepin a strong desire to roam the world over con- 
stantly warred with an inclination to enjoy in comfort 
the good things of this life as the} 7 " came to him. While 
his fellow monks were doing penance for their sins, 
Father Hennepin had been accustomed to steal away to 
some secluded spot, there to spend the rapid hours in 
poring over the Relations sent back to France from the 

1 Sometime during the years 1669-70 La Salle had reached the 
Ohio from Lake Erie, and had floated down that river to the present 
site of Louisville. See Parkman's La Salle and the Discovery of the 
Great West, p. 22. 

29 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

" five hundred convents of Recollects scattered over 
two and twenty provinces in America." 

When such writings failed him, he used often to skulk 
behind the doors of Dunkirk inns to listen to the talk of 
seamen. " The smoke of tobacco," he writes, " was dis- 
agreeable to me and created pains in my stomach, while 
I was thus intent upon giving ear to their relations ; yet, 
nevertheless, I was very attentive to the accounts they 
gave of their encounters by land and sea, the peril they 
had gone through, and all the accidents which befell them 
in their long voyages. This occupation was so agree- 
able to me that I have spent whole days and nights at 
it without eating." 

On the bloody field of Seneff, where Prince Conde 
and William of Orange heaped the ground with twenty 
thousand corpses, Father Hennepin was ministering to 
the dying when he received the long-hoped-for orders 
to proceed to Rochelle and there take passage for Amer- 
ica. On the same vessel with Hennepin were La Salle 
and his faithful friend Henry de Tonty, the son of the 
famous financier whose name the word " tontine " pre- 
serves for us. 

When La Salle came to make up his com pan y, doubt- 
less he was glad to secure the aid of a priest who was not 
a Jesuit and therefore not au enemy ; who, though nat- 
urally suspicious, could be brought around by a few 
words of flattery ; who had no ambition save to gratify 
an insatiable desire to see new places ; and who, when an 
adventure was on foot, could live on boiled corn and 
sleep in a hole in the snow. Thus it was that while 
the Griffin was building, Father Hennepin's prayers 
and exhortations were added to Tonty's commands to 
keep the fickle ship-carpenters at work; and when at 
last the vessel was ready for her voyage, Hennepin's 

30 




ROBERT CAVET.IER, SIEUR DE I,A SALUE 



THE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

voice led in the Te Deum which celebrated the joyful 
passage from the rapid waters of Niagara to the broad 
expanse of Lake Erie. 

After a tempestuous voyage across this most fitful of 
lakes, the Griffin awaited but a favorable wind to at- 
tempt the passage of the wide river called by the French 
the strait — Detroit. As the morning breeze came dan- 
cing across the glassy waters the pilot quickly got the 
vessel under way, and the Griffin, borne along by her 
two great square-sails, fairly flew over the white-capped 
billows. Laying her course between Bois Blanc Island 
on the right and Sugar Island on the left, the little ves- 
sel was soon breasting the rapids between the long, low- 
lying Grosse Isle and the clay bluffs of the mainland. 
The swift-running waters eddied and swirled about the 
struggling vessel, as if to protest against the passage of 
this sturdy little pioneer of the mighty fleets which in 
these modern days make that strait the greatest com- 
mercial pathway in the world. 

Father Hennepin was so moved with the beauty of 
the scene spread out before him that he would have 
given over all thoughts of further explorations in order 
to stay and enjoy the delights of what seemed to him 
an earthly paradise. He even urged upon La Salle the 
advantages of a settlement at some point on the strait. 
The white-iish were excellent, he said ; and a post there 
would keep the Iroquois in check. The pious father 
further explains that his real reason for wishing to re- 
main was that he might have a chance " to preach the 
gospel to those ignorant nations"; but La Salle cut 
short all such ideas by the icy remark to the priest, that 
considering the great passion he had a few months be- 
fore for the discovery of a new country, his present 
proposal was quite unaccountable. 

31 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

As the Griffin rounded the headland that commands 
the site of Detroit, a canoe, shooting out from the rushes 
that fringe the shore, glided alongside the ship. An 
iron hand 1 clutched the low bulwarks and Tonty sprang 
aboard. He had been sent forward to look after the 
fifteen men whom La Salle had despatched to the upper 
lakes to buy furs as a cargo for the vessel; but on being 
overtaken by the Griffin, Tonty joined his leader, and 
doubtless La Salle was well pleased to have the com- 
panionship of the one man whose devotion was as un- 
questioned as his courage was unlimited, and whose un- 
failing good humor and ingenuity well fitted him to 
succeed in daring enterprises. 

On the 12th of August the Griffin, skirting the marshy 
shores of the long island that parts the waters of the 
Detroit River at its head, glided out upon the surface 
of a small and shallow lake. It was Sainte Claire's 
day, and Father Hennepin was not slow to suggest that 
the name of the founder of his order be given to a body 
of water as beautiful and as even-tempered as Clara 
d'Assisi is reputed to have been. The twenty miles of 
lake passed over, Pilot Lucas saw before him vast 
stretches of rushes, among which the waters from the 
river above sought the lake through many a serpentine 
channel. One way after another was sounded, until at 
last a passage was, found and the Griffin pursued her 
course up the island-strewn river. The way into Lake 
Huron was blocked by a strong northwest wind; and it 
was not until August 23d, after a voyage of twelve days 
from Lake Erie, that the vessel, hauled from the shore 
by a dozen men, and aided by a brisk southerly breeze, 



1 Tonty had lost one band in the wars, and its place was supplied 
with an iron hook, hence his name, Tonty of the Iron-baud. 

32 



THE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

overcame the rapids and was tossed by the waves of the 
great lake. Then the ship's company sang Te Deum 
" to return thanks to the Almighty for their happy 
navigation." 

On the 24th the Griffin ran across Saginaw Bay, then 
as now the terror of timid ones, by reason of the high 
winds that sweep across it. Then for two days she lay 
becalmed among the rocky and pine -clad islands of 
Thunder Bay. On the fourth day there came a storm. 
The crew sent down the main-} r ard and topmast, and 
then fell on their knees in prayer. Even La Salle gave 
up hope, and began to prepare for death with the oth- 
ers, excepting only Pilot Lucas, whom, says Hennepin, 
" we could never force to pray ; and he did nothing all 
that while but curse and swear against M. la Salle, who, 
as he said, had brought him thither to make him perish 
in a nasty lake, and lose the glory he had acquired by 
his long and happy navigations on the ocean." But fate 
spared Pilot Lucas for a few months longer. Hennepin 
had vowed an altar to St. Anthony of Padua, and was 
prudent enough to promise that it should be set up in 
the far-distant Louisiana. 

The storm died away as quickly as it arose, and the 
descending sun made a background of glory against 
which the wooded cliffs of the turtle-shaped island of 
Michilimackinac stood out in the clear air, a grand sen- 
tinel guarding the harbor of St. Ignace. ISText day the 
anchors dropped into the clear waters of the harbor, 
and lay plainly visible on the white bottom of the lake. 
Culverin and arquebus boomed a salute, which was 
taken up and tossed to and fro from island cliff to pine- 
tipped cape. The booming guns brought crowds of 
yelping Indians from their bark huts, straggling French 
traders from their cabins, and two or three black-robed 
c 33 



THE NORTHWEST'UNDER THREE FLAGS 

priests from the little mission-house. La Salle, finely 
dressed, and wearing a scarlet cloak richly trimmed 
with gold braid, landed with his men, and all sought 
the rough little chapel in the Ottawa village, to give 
thanks for a safe voyage. The Ottawas in their canoes 
accompanied the new-comers back to the ship, surround- 
ing the "big canoe," as they called the Griffin, and 
heaping the vessel's deck with the white-fish and trout 
so pleasing to the palate of Father Hennepin. The next 
day, when La Salle visited the palisaded town of the 
Hurons, these Indians greeted him with a salute of 
musketry, the Europeans having told them that was 
the highest form of compliment. 

Of the fifteen men whom La Salle had sent before 
him to buy furs for the return voyage of the Griffin, 
four were found at St. Ignace. They had squandered 
their goods, and had wasted the proceeds in riotous liv- 
ing. Two others had escaped to Sault Ste. Marie, 
whither La Salle sent Tonty to fetch them. The leader, 
however, sailed before his lieutenant returned. Per- 
plexed and anno} T ecl by the hostile feelings that his 
jealous crew had aroused among the ever -suspicious 
Indians, he was led to push on, in order to get his cargo 
before his enemies could tamper with the tribes of the 
Illinois. Fortune favored him. At Green Bay he found 
a friend in an old Pottawatomie chief, whose boundless 
admiration for Count Frontenac he was ready to extend 
to all who bore the "great chiefs" commission. Here, 
too, he found in waiting a cargo of furs gathered by the 
few faithful ones of his advance party. Elated at his 
success, and believing himself now certain to secure the 
means of continuing his explorations, La Salle placed 
his pilot in command of the Griffin for the return voy- 
age, giving him five picked men for a crew. He him- 

34 



THE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

self, with Hennepin and fourteen others, embarked in 
four canoes and steered southward. 

No sooner were the canoes fairly out into the lake, 
than one of those sudden September storms, so common 
on Lake Michigan, came down upon them ; and it was 
not until morning that the tempest -tossed voyagers 
came safe to land. They skirted the Michigan shore as 
far as the St. Joseph River, where they waited twenty 
days for Tonty. He brought no tidings of the Griffin, 
and it was several months before La Salle learned for a 
certainty that the same storm which had so nearly 
proved his own destruction had sent to the bottom his 
little vessel and all the high hopes that depended upon 
it. "Whether the loss was due to the pilot's carelessness 
or to his treachery is not known to this day ; for none 
of the crew was ever again heard of. Thus disastrous- 
ly ended the only voyage of the first vessel on the Upper 
Lakes. 

La Salle, with Tonty, Hennepin, and his followers, 
made his slow way south until he came to the banks 
of the Illinois. Straightway he began to build a new 
vessel in which to voyage down that river to its junc- 
tion with the Mississippi. Once more hope fired his 
soul, and with careful forethought he made his plans. 
The Griffin was to bring the anchors and rigging for 
the new vessel ; but so certain was La Salle that the 
Griffin had been lost that, with a courage that marks 
him as one of the greatest of the world's explorers, 
he determined to undertake a winter journey back 
over the thousand miles that lay between him and 
Fort Frontenac, in order to obtain the necessary sup- 
plies. 

Sending the reluctant Hennepin on a vo}^age of dis- 
covery down the Illinois, and leaving Tonty in charge 

35 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

of the pitiful little fort Crevecceur, 1 La Salle took a 
few companions and began his perilous March journey 
through half -frozen swamps and across deep rivers, 
where his way was constantly endangered by hostile 
Indians. Beaching his old fort at the mouth of the St. 
Joseph River, and there learning beyond the shadow of a 
doubt that the Griffin had been wrecked, the little party 
struck across Michigan. Through dense woods where 
the thorns tore their clothes into strips and cut their 
hands and faces till they streamed with blood, for three 
days they made their slow way. Then their fainting 
spirits were revived by broad stretches of prairie bor- 
dered by groves of oak, the home of deer, bear, and wild 
turkey. These "oak openings" were at this time the 
battle-ground for a half-dozen tribes of Indians, no one 
tribe being able to hold a land so rich in game and with 
so fertile a soil. 

A rapid journey of two days brought them to a series 
of marshes, through which they waded painfully for 
three long days, with hostile Indians on their track, so 
that they dared light no fire at night. Once they took 
off their water-soaked clothes, and rolling themselves in 
their blankets, lay down to sleep on a dry knoll. When 
morning came they were forced to make a fire to thaw 
out their frozen garments, and the smoke quickly be- 
trayed their presence to a band of Illinois ; but when 
the Indians found that La Salle's party were not Iro- 
quois, they suffered the white men to go in peace. 

Ten days out from St. Joseph, they came upon the 

1 La Salle might well have selected the name Crevecceur (broken- 
heart) to express the plight into which his expedition had come. But 
to him the term doubtless had no such meaning. CrSvecoeur was the 
name of a celebrated French fortress, and it was hope, not despair, 
that led to the selection of the name. 

36 



THE FRENCH OCCUPY THE NORTHWEST 

broad Detroit, within a few miles of those islands whence, 
seven months before, they had looked out with such 
confidence upon the future. La Salle lost no time in 
pushing on to Fort Frontenac, where he arrived after 
a journey in all of sixty-five days. He was able to se- 
cure the necessary materials for his vessel, and in time 
he became master of the Mississippi. 1 

With the narration of the voyage of the Griffin the 
tale of discoveries along the Great Lakes is full. The 
Lake Superior region — the first of all Northwestern ter- 
ritory to be explored and to boast of settlements — a 
century and a half after Marquette's day became an un- 
known and despised wilderness ; and statesmen of a na- 
tion undreamed of by the founders of New France pro- 
nounced these great waterways " beyond the furthest 
bounds of civilization — if not in the moon." 2 The vir- 
gin forests that La Salle was the first white man to 
tread were not to echo the sound of the settler's axe until 
the tide of immigration, sweeping through the land of 
the once-dreaded Iroquois, forced back the Huron rem- 
nants as it spread itself over those territories whence 
the Frenchman, and his English successors as well, con- 
fidently expected to draw an annual wealth of furs. The 
star of empire, that moved so rapidly westward during 
the second half of the seventeenth century, was to ex- 
perience more than fifty years of wellnigh total eclipse 
before it again became the guide of the explorer. 

1 In 1781, La Salle reached the mouth of the Mississippi and named 
the valley Louisiana. In 1787, while on his way up the great river to 
Canada, he was murdered. 

2 Henry Clay's speech in 1829 on Senator Norvell's bill to grant 
lands to build the Sault Ste. Marie canal. 



CHAPTER II 
CADILLAC FOUNDS DETROIT 

The closing decade of the seventeenth century was a 
joyous period for New France. The great Frontenac 
well expressed the feelings of the people whom he gov- 
erned when, in spite of his seventy years, he sprang into 
the midst of a circle of Indians gathered at Quebec and 
danced the war- dance to celebrate his victories. In 
1690, simulating a confidence he was far from feeling, 
he had sent back to New England in disgrace the fleet 
with which Sir William Phips had confidently expected 
to capture Quebec; and the land-forces which, under 
the leadership of Fitz-John Winthrop, were to overrun 
Canada, never reached the borders of that country. 
Then, too, the Indian trade, which had been practically 
cut off by the raids of the Iroquois, began once more to 
animate the too -long -closed warehouses of Montreal; 
and France was in a position to assume the aggressive 
in all her territory from the mouth of the St. Lawrence, 
through the chain of the Great Lakes, and thence down 
the Mississippi, a region made hers by right of the dis- 
coveries of Marquette and Joliet and of La Salle. 

Throughout the region of the upper lakes, however, 
the English were from time to time sending their scouts, 
the Iroquois, to open avenues of trade. Unhampered 
by monopolies or other fetters of feudalism, the English 
could sell goods a third cheaper than could their ene- 




UPPER LAKE 










.eSr> 



VUUoft'H uf French >>»* 
Mixt<lim<<kiii<tc { ° r.lfituur 
HuronjJ ■ Oiitaiittn] "J.Miseil 

\ 

I.Blancs 



•#j^ 



,,^ 



0"" %;% fa tt° J 



HURON 

T'.tnut-r 



S * /u V!",''vA L A A' B or 

Wfl^T R A N |^ /C 

ZaAe « 




moll's map of THE NORTHWEST IN 1720 
(See page 165) 



CADILLAC FOUNDS DETROIT 

mies, and at the same time make a larger profit. Then, 
again, no conscientious scruples seem to have deterred 
the English from supplying the Indians with all the 
rum they had furs to pay for; whereas the French, 
through their missionaries, had some regard for the 
morals of the persons they were bent on converting. 

To check British advances Du Lhut, sent with fifty 
soldiers to the Detroit region in 1686, built Fort St. 
Joseph, at the head of the St. Clair Kiver, near the present 
site of Port Huron; and the next year Henry de Tonty 
came across southern Michigan from his station in the 
Illinois country to the Detroit Kiver, 1 where he met his 
cousin Du Lhut from the St. Clair, and La Forest and 
Durantaye from Michilimackinac, all going to assist 
Frontenac in chastising the Iroquois. On the way down 
from Michilimackinac, the two Frenchman had the fort- 
une to fall in with and capture thirty Englishmen who 
had been sent by the indefatigable Governor Dongan, of 
New York, to capture that post ; and a second English 
party, despatched to reinforce the first, was taken on 
Lake Erie. For fourteen years Fort St. Joseph was 
maintained — at least, we have M. de Longueuil's report 
of two conferences which he held with various tribes of 
Indians in the Detroit country in 1700, and in these 2 he 
speaks of " my fort at Detroit " being garrisoned by a 
small bod} T of French. The object of his negotiations 
was to induce the Indians to take the war-path against 
the English on the Ohio, to extirpate " that scum," and 
to pillage their goods. La Hontan, who passed up the 
Detroit in the September of 1687, locates Fort St. Joseph 
on his map of that year. This fort, or earthwork, built 



1 Louisiana Collections, p. 69. 

2 New York Collections Colonial MS., vol. ix., p. 704. 

39 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

by Du Lhut at the foot of Lake Huron, was officially 
known as the fort at Detroit years before the founda- 
tion of the city that now bears the name once given to 
the entire region between Lakes Erie and Huron. It is 
probable, however, that instead of being maintained as a 
permanent post, Fort St. Joseph was simply a summer 
headquarters for detachments sent out as need was to 
hold the English in check. This would account for the 
fact that La Hontan, on .his larger map, marks it as an 
abandoned post; and would also explain the lack of any 
mention of it in connection with Cadillac's rule over the 
upper lake territory. 1 . 

In 1694, Michilimackinac seemed to be the strategic 
point for the fur-trade ; and in order to strengthen that 
post Frontenac sent thither Antoine de Lamothe Cadil- 
lac, a man after the governor-general's own heart. Shea, 
the great historian of the Catholic Church in colonial 
times, characterizes Cadillac as "chimerical, grasping, 
overbearing, regarding religion to be used for the pur- 
poses of government or as an element of trade." This 
is a half-truth. Cadillac was a born soldier, resource- 

1 Briefly the history of Fort St. Joseph is: Built by Du Lhut in 
1686 ; abandoned as a regular post in 1688 ; occupied as a military 
station by the English in 1763 ; Governor Patrick Sinclair builds 
fortification on the site of St. Clair in 1785 ; artillery encampment at 
St. Clair, and skirmish between Americans and British in 1812 ; in 
May, 1814, Fort St. Joseph rebuilt and named Fort Gratiot, after 
Captain Charles Gratiot, U. S. A., the constructing engineer; 1822, 
post abandoned ; 1828, reoccupied ; 1832, cholera scourge carries off 
many soldiers stationed there on their way to the Black Hawk War ; 
1849, fort repaired ; 1858, occupied by caretakers ; 1862-5, occupied as 
recruiting-station ; 1879, abandoned and land sold. It was in 1861, 
while his father was caretaker of Fort Gratiot, that Thomas A. Edison 
there erected his first electrical battery and began those experiments 
that have made him famous. — See Michigan Pioneer Collections, vol. 
xi., p. 249. 

40 



CADILLAC FOUNDS DETROIT 

ful, prompt, and vigorous. He was also a soldier of fort- 
une ; and he had come to New France to achieve wealth 
through government concessions vigorously prosecuted. 
In those days the soldier was expected to live off the 
country. He fought the king's enemies indeed, but at 
the same time he protected his own property, and he re- 
garded the Indian rather as a hunting-machine than as 
a brand to be plucked from the burning. Hence the 
Church historian of to-day has no more liking for the 
memory of La Salle or of Cadillac than the missionaries 
had for them personally. Indeed, when he reached his 
new post Cadillac was already under the ban of the 
Jesuits. During the winter of 1693, he was a member 
of the military circle that Frontenac had gathered about 
him at Quebec. The officers, to beguile the long winter 
evenings, arranged some theatricals, and rumor had it 
that one of the plays to be presented was Moliere's 
"Tartuife," in which the falsehood, lust, greed, and 
ambition of the priesthood are depicted. The storm of 
anathemas that swept over Canada had a violent centre 
at Mackinac, and Cadillac on reaching his new station 
found that the pious Jesuits at that post had prejudiced 
the officers against their commandant. His prompt 
action in imprisoning the insubordinate ones, while it 
established his own authority, resulted on the part of 
the Jesuits in an even more intense opposition to him 
and his plans. 

In order to put a stop to the Indian intrigues, Cadillac 
resorted to measures which even the savages were at no 
loss to understand. The Iroquois had invited the Lake 
Indians to a council on the banks of the Detroit, and 
one evening after this meeting had been decided upon 
the Hurons brought to Michilimackinac seven Iroquois 
prisoners. As the party landed upon the beach, the 

41 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

French, acting under orders, stabbed two of the Iroquois. 
The Hurons promptly defended the others, but finally 
were prevailed upon to give a chief into the hands of 
the whites, who at once sent to the Ottawas an invita- 
tion to drink the broth of an Iroquois. The victim was 
first tied to a stake, then tortured by burning with a 
gun-barrel heated red-hot, and was finally cut in pieces and 
eaten by the assembled Indians. At another time four 
Iroquois prisoners, taken in battle by parties sent out by 
Cadillac, were burned alive, in order to stir up strife be- 
tween the Lake Indians and the Iroquois; and Cadillac 
promised that "if they bring any prisoners to me, I can 
assure you their fate will be no sweeter than that of the 
others." 

In spite of such summary measures, however, Cadillac 
was unable to keep his Indians from being tampered with 
while on their way back from Montreal. The Iroquois 
were mingling with the Detroit Indians, and the only rem- 
edy was war. By selling all he possessed and giving his 
Indians credit, he succeeded in getting the chief Onaske 
to take the war-path with a strong party of braves. So 
vigorous was the chase that forty Iroquois, in order to es- 
cape their pursuers, jumped into a river and were drown- 
ed, thirty scalps and as many prisoners were taken, and 
four or five hundred beaver-skins, which the Iroquois in- 
tended to exchange for English goods, were seized as 
booty. This success put a stop to Iroquois advances un- 
til Cadillac was ready to meet them more than half way. 1 

1 On the return of this war party Cadillac opened ten kegs of bran- 
dy, and, when the missionaries remonstrated, he replied: "If a little 
hilarity grieve you so much, how will you be able to endure daily ex- 
posure of these neophytes to unlimited English rum and heresy ?" — See 
N. T. Col. Doc. y vol. ix., p. 648 ; also, Parkman's Half Century of Con- 
flict, vol. i., chap. 2. 

42 



CADILLAC FOUNDS DETROIT 

Even to a much duller mind than Cadillac's it would 
have been clear that the place to check the advances of 
the Iroquois was not at Michilimackinac, but on the 
Detroit, through which narrow strait all travel and com- 
merce must pass on their way between the lower and 
the upper lakes. This was also the key to the Missis- 
sippi region ; and Robert Livingston had already made 
up his mind that if England should only seize and hold 
the Detroit, the French fur-trade would be ruined- Con- 
fident that he could easily persuade his superiors of the 
absolute necessity of occupying the strategic position at 
the Detroit, and equally sure that he saw a fine opening 
to make a fortune, Cadillac went to Quebec and there 
explained his ideas to a distinguished company of trad- 
ers, headed by Callieres, the Governor, and Champigny, 
the Intendant. A more politic advocate would have 
satisfied himself with presenting the military and com- 
mercial features of his plans, but the impetuous Cadillac 
laid great stress on the social and moral reformation he 
proposed to effect by teaching the natives to speak the 
French language. 1 He was on record as believing that 
the only fruits of the Jesuit missions consisted in the 
baptism of infants who died upon reaching the age of 
reason ; and that while the Jesuits were ostensibly em- 
ployed in the vain labor of saving souls, still they found 
ample time to enrich their order by traffic in furs. It 
was no wonder, therefore, that Cadillac met the open 
and powerful opposition of the Intendant, Champigny, 
who voiced the sentiment of his friends the Jesuits when 
he argued that if the savages were to be saved they 
must be kept as far as possible from the vices of civil- 

1 Cadillac's correspondence in regard to the Detroit settlement is 
calendared in the Canadian archives for 1887. It is also printed in 
vol. v. of Margry. 

43 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

ization. Cadillac did not realize, and indeed it has re- 
mained for writers of our own day to point out, that to 
the savages the virtues of civilization are no less destruc- 
tive than are its vices. The clothing, ammunition, and 
other presents provided by the whites begot among the 
Indians a comparative luxury and ease of living that 
created a demand for brandy. 1 

Unable to persuade the near-sighted authorities at 
Quebec, Cadillac carried his case over seas and made his 
arguments before Count Pontchartrain, the colonial min- 
ister of Louis XIV. Into the half-willing ear of the 
minister the impetuous soldier poured the torrent of his 
plans for a permanent post, with its garrison, its traders, 
its schools, and its tribes of friendly Indians, all working - 
together for the advancement of France and the con- 
fusion of her enemies, the Iroquois and the English. 

When the somewhat sceptical minister inquired how a 
post at the Detroit would keep the Indians from resort- 
ing to the English, the wily Cadillac replied that, al- 
though the will to go to the English and deal in the 
cheapest markets would still be present, yet " each sav- 
age, one with another, kills per year only fifty or sixty 
beavers, and, as he is neighbor to the Frenchman, fre- 
quently borrows of him, paying in proportion to the re- 
turns b}^ the chase. With what little remains to him 
the Indian is compelled to make purchases for his family. 
Thus he finds himself unable to go to the English, be- 
cause his remaining goods are not worth carrying so far. 
. . . Another reason is that in frequenting the French he 
receives many caresses; they are too cunning to allow his 

1 Benjamin Kidd iu his Social Evolution, p. 47, quotes with ap- 
proval the remark of another that among the causes to which the de- 
cay of the New Zealand natives might be attributed are "drink, dis- 
ease, Europeau clothing, peace, and wealth." 

44 



CADILLAC FOUNDS DETROIT 

furs to escape, especially when they succeed in making 
him eat and drink with them." 

Cadillac's reasoning seemed good, both to Count Pont- 
chartrain and also to Louis XIV., who at the time was 
collecting his resources and recruiting his strength to 
get control of the Spanish succession. The fact that 
little money from the royal treasury was asked for doubt- 
less made Cadillac's path an easier one ; but there can 
be no doubt that the commander's energy, his uncom- 
promising nature, and his apparent mastery over the 
conditions of frontier life won for him unusual conces- 
sions in the way of trade and land, concessions that were 
held the more precious in royal eyes because of the very 
fact that they were so intangible and so distant. 1 

Cadillac was promised protection against his enemies, 
the Jesuits; enough money and men to carry out his 
enterprise, and a tract of land fifteen arpents (acres) 
square, " wherever on the Detroit the new fort should be 
located." Thus equipped he set sail for America; and 
on June 2, 1701, he left La Chine with fifty soldiers and 
an equal number of Canadians. Alphonse de Tonty, a 
brother of La Salle's companion, was Cadillac's captain, 
and for lieutenants he had M. Dugue and M. Chacor- 
nacle. Taking the old route of Indians and traders, in 
order to avoid the Iroquois, the party paddled up the 
Ottawa River, made the thirty portages to Lake Nipis- 
sing, thence to Georgian Bay and by Lake Huron down 
to the Detroit. Arriving on the 21th day of July, Ca- 
dillac immediately set about making a strong stockade 
of wooden pickets, with bastions at the four angles. 

1 The documents relating to Cadillac's dealings with Count Pontchar- 
train are given iu Sheldon's Early History of Michigan; they are also to 
be found in part in Margry, vol. v. General Cass furnished the papers 
to Mrs. Sheldon. 

45 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Inside the palisade a few stake-houses were built. To 
this work the commandant gave the name of Fort Pont- 
chartrain, after the minister to whose interest it was 
due. The chapel, begun on the feast-day of Saint Ann, 
July 26, was named in her honor, and this name the suc- 
cessive churches have kept to this day. The little set- 
tlement that sprang up about the fort was generally 
spoken of as Detroit. 

The control of the trade with the Indians had been 
granted to one of those monopolies which at that day 
were the leading feature of the French economic policy. 
Among the directors of this Company of the Colony 
the Jesuits found powerful friends ; for the sufficient 
reason that Cadillac's new enterprise threatened to cre- 
ate a body of independent traders, and so to cut into 
the profits of the monopoly. Moreover, the success of 
the settlement at Detroit meant the abandonment- by 
both soldiers and Indians of the post at Michilimackinac, 
and hence the loss of an old and prominent mission. Ac- 
commodating as he was in speech, Cadillac never failed 
to recognize an enemy, and never lost an opportunity to 
trample his foes under his feet. To Count Pontchartrain 
he wrote that the only way to get along with the Jesuits 
was, "first, to let them do as they please; secondly, to 
do as they please; and thirdly, to say nothing of what 
they do." Then with a nice affectation of humility he 
adds: " If I let the Jesuits do as they please, the savages 
will not establish themselves at Detroit ; if I do as they 
would desire, it will be necessary to abandon this post; 
and if I say nothing of what they do, it will only be 
necessary for me to pursue my present course." Three 
paragraphs further on in this same letter the old Adam 
gets the better of the commandant. " Thirty Hurons," 
he says, "arrived from Michilimackinac on the 28th of 

46 



CADILLAC FOUNDS DETROIT 

June (1703). There remained only about twenty-five. 
Father Carheil, who is missionary there, remains always 
firm. I hope this Autumn to pluck the last feather out 
of his w T ing; and I am persuaded that this obstinate old 
priest will die in his parish without a single parishioner 
to bury him." It would be impossible to pay a higher 
tribute than Cadillac unwittingly pays to the zeal and 
long-suffering of the old missionary, who saw his flock 
lured away by the brandy and the vices at the new fort. 
He labored on until 1705, being sustained by the com- 
panionship of Father Aveneau from St. Joseph, whence 
also the Indians had been lured to Detroit. Then the 
two, finding themselves without parishioners, burned 
their chapel, lest it should be profaned, and departed 
for Quebec. 

The eager Cadillac had plans for a copper-mine on 
Lake Huron ; for silk-culture among the mulberry-trees 
of Lake Erie; for a uniformed Indian militia; for a 
seminary in which to teach the French language to the 
savages; and for grants of lands to settlers. In short, 
he designed to plant at Detroit not simply a trading- 
post, but a colony. He spoke of himself as one whom 
" God had raised up to be another Moses to go and de- 
liver the Indians from captivity ; or rather, as Caleb, 
to bring them back to the lands of their fathers. . . . 
Meanwhile, Montreal (the Jesuits) plays the part of 
Pharaoh ; he cannot see this emigration without trem- 
bling, aud he arms himself to destroy it." 

Cadillac was especially incensed against the Jesuits 
on account of their opposition to- the sale of spirits. 
So strong w T as their hostility that Louis XIV. in 1694, 
referred to the Sorbonne for decision of the question of 
allowing French brandy to be shipped to Michilimackinac. 
The decision of the council gave to the Northwest its 

47 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

first prohibitory law ; and the commandant was no 
more willing to enforce the order than his successors 
have been to carry out similar laws. "A drink of 
brandy after the repast,' 1 he maintained, "seems neces- 
sary to cook the bilious meats and the crudities which 
they leave in the stomach." Again, at Detroit, Cadillac 
quotes from a sermon by Father Carheil, whose wing he 
was engaged in plucking. The Jesuit had maintained 
that there was " no power, either human or divine, which 
can permit the sale of this drink." " Hence you per- 
ceive," argues the crafty commandant, " that this father 
passes boldly on all matters of state, and will not even 
submit to the decision of the pope." 

The question was indeed a hard one for Cadillac. He 
understood clearly that unless he had liquor to sell to 
the savages he might as well abandon the post ; for the 
Indians would go straight to the English at Albany 
where goods were cheap and rum was unlimited. To 
give up Detroit never entered into Cadillac's plans. 
He therefore chose the middle course. Instead of pro- 
hibition he would have high license. In the restrictions 
which he threw about the traffic in liquors he was both 
honest and earnest; and, as events proved, he was far in 
advance of his times. In the report of M. d'Aigrement, 1 
who inspected Detroit in 1708, it is mentioned as one of 
the grievances of the savages against Cadillac, that " in 
order to prevent disturbances which would arise from 
the excessive use of brandy, he causes it all to be put 
into the storehouse, and sold at the rate of twenty francs 
a quart. Those who will have it, French as well as 
Indians, are obliged to go to the storehouse to drink, and 



1 Mrs. Sheldon gives this report in full, in her Early History of 
Michigan. 

48 



CADILLAC FOUNDS DETROIT 

each can obtain, at one time, only the twenty-fourth 
part of a quart. It is certain that the savages cannot 
become intoxicated on that quantity. The price is high, 
and as the}^ can get brandy only each in his turn, it some- 
times happens that the savages are obliged to return 
home without a taste of this beverage, and they seem 
ready to kill themselves with disappointment." 

It is refreshing to be able for a time to turn from the 
petty squabbles between Cadillac and his Jesuit enemies, 
and to leave the bickerings between the commandant 
and the traders which fill so many pages of Margry, 1 
in order to trace what is to us far more important — the 
beginnings of family life in the Northwest. In a friendly 
letter from Pere Germain at Quebec to Lamothe Cadil- 
lac, at Detroit, dated August 25, 1701, the writer tells of 
the intense desire of Madame Cadillac to join her hus- 
band ; and he quotes the reply which that most dutiful 
wife made to the dames of her native city, when they 
expostulated with her for proposing to brave the wilder- 
ness. " When a woman loves her husband as she ought," 
responded the plucky wife, " there is nothing more at- 
tractive than his society, wherever he may be. All else 
should be indifferent to her." Suiting the action to the 
word, she started with Madame Tonty for a companion, 
and so soon as the ice-bolts had unlocked Detroit in the 
spring of 1702, the two women arrived safely, and each 
was installed as the mistress of a stake-house within the 
palisades of Fort Pontchartrain. 



1 While Lewis Cass was minister to France, he obtained copies of 
many of the documents relating to the early history of the Northwest ; 
and at his instigation, Margry, the keeper of the records in the De- 
partment of the Marine, began to gather those documents which, by 
the aid of this government, he has published, to the great assistance of 
historians. 

d 49 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

At the time of their marriage Cadillac was less than 
thirty years old ; and already he had seen much of the 
world. A native of Gascony, the exact place of Cadillac's 
birth has as yet defied discovery ; nor is the year of his 
birth beyond dispute. 1 It is evident from his writings, 
however, that he was educated beyond what was com- 
mon in those days. His pen was ever as ready as his 
sword ; and both were absolutely tireless. He fought 
his enemies incessantly, both with the rapier of his keen 
wit and the arquebus of his multitudinous arguments. 
Yet he was naturally of a kindly disposition, and was 
the sort of man that a woman would follow to the ends 
of the earth. Married on the 25th of June, 1687, to 
Marie Therese Guyon, of Quebec, it is probable that the 
early years of their married life were spent at Port 
Koyal, where Cadillac held a royal grant of land ; 2 but 
a long separation came when he was ordered to Michili- 
mackinac, where ways were rough and food was limited 
as well in quantity as in variety. 3 

The wives of commandant and captain having led the 

i A Sketch of the Life of Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, by C. M. 
Burton (Detroit, 1895), p. 6. Mr. Burton's researches into the early 
life of Cadillac have been both painstaking and untiring. He has 
copies of all of Cadillac's manuscripts and of every paper to be found 
either in France or America that can throw auy light on Cadillac. 
Silas Farmer's History of Detroit and Michigan also contains much 
material gathered at home and abroad. A short sketch of Cadillac 13 
to be found in Parkman's Half Century of Conflict, vol. i., p. 17. 

8 Curiously enough, just a century after Cadillac's marriage, his 
granddaughter, with her husband aud three children, became citizens 
of the United States, and by virtue of an act of the legislature of 
Massachusetts had restored to them the holdings of Cadillac at a time 
when he was styled Lord of Douaquec and Mont Desert. Many of 
the Mount Desert titles are based on this royal grant. 

3 Cadillac writes of the Michilimackinac station: "Neither bread 
nor meat is eaten there, and no other food is to be had but a little fish 
and Indian-corn."— N. Y. Col. Doc, ix., p. 586. 

50 




COUKEUK DE BOIS 



CADILLAC FOUNDS DETROIT 

way, those of the traders and soldiers were not slow to 
follow ; and gradually there came to be a number of 
homes at Detroit, with all that the word home then im- 
plied. On the oldest of the now extant French parish 
registers in the west, under the date of February 2, 1704, 
is recorded the baptism of the seventh of Cadillac's 
thirteen children, 1 and in the course of the ten years of 
his sojourn three others were born in Detroit and were 
duly baptized by the priests of St. Ann's. The same 
record bears witness to the fact that the wife of one of 
the habitans at Detroit was the mother of no fewer than 
thirty children ; and that large families were the rule. 

If we were to believe implicitly the glowing accounts 
Cadillac gives to Count Pontchartrain of his success at 
Detroit, then never was a colony more prosperous. It 
is true that in 1Y03 a fire, maliciously started, as Cadil- 
lac says, burned the houses of the commandant and of 
Tonty, together with the church and a portion of the 
palisades; that Tonty and others conspired to cheat the 
Company of the Colony by selling the company's goods 
and retaining the proceeds ; 2 - that the Indians were ever 

1 Cadillac's eldest son accompanied his father as a cadet. Another 
son went to Detroit with bis mother, two girls being left in school at 
Quebec. Shea in his History of the Catholic Church gives a fac-simile 
of the record of the baptism. The register itself is in the possession 
of ilr. R. R. Elliott of Detroit. 

2 Alphonse Tonty, Baron of Paludy, was born in 1659; he became 
jealous of Cadillac and plotted against him, and out of this plot came 
the incendiary fire of 1703 that burned a considerable portion of 
Detroit, including the first St. Ann's Church, the house of the Recol- 
lects, and the first parish register. Tonty's daughter Theresa was the 
first child known to have been born in Detroit. Tonty was acting 
commandant at Detroit from 1704 to 1706, during Cadillac's absence 
at Quebec to answer charges brought against him; and also from 1720 
till his death, November 10, 1727. He was buried at Detroit. His 
son, Charles Henry Tonty, became governor at Fort St. Louis (Mobile), 
where Henry Tonty died in 1704. 

51 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

troublesome; and the Jesuits were persistent in their 
efforts to ruin the enterprise. But Cadillac was never 
for a moment discouraged, and the proof that he was 
correct in his predictions as to the ultimate success and 
importance of the post is to be found in the fact that 
Detroit alone, of all the upper lake establishments, has 
continued to grow in strength and population from the 
day it was founded down to the present time. 

There was much truth, however, in the official report 
of M. d'Aigrement, who in 1708 spent nineteen July 
days at Detroit. He found that Cadillac was far from 
being popular with either the savages or the colonists. 
Parent, the blacksmith, complained that he had to pay 
annually six hundred francs and two casks of ale for the 
privilege of plying his trade ; and besides he was com- 
pelled to keep all Cadillac's horses shod. To be sure, 
the commandant had but one horse, yet there was no 
certainty that he would not have fifty others the next 
year. Then, too, Pinet, 1 the gunsmith, was required to 
repair twelve guns each month, besides paying three 
hundred francs a year. The people also grumbled be- 
caused Cadillac took as grist toll an eighth instead of the 
customary fourteenth part, although it was admitted 
that the cost of the mill had been excessive. Of the 
three hundred and fifty roods of valuable land, Cadillac 
owned one hundred and fifty-seven, while the French 
owned but forty-six, and the Hurons held one hundred 
and fifty; moreover, the commandant required the sol- 
diers and savages to break his land, and make it ready 

1 Joseph Parent, farmer, master-tool maker, and brewer, came to De- 
troit in 1606, under a contract for three years of service at his trades. 
Yves Pinet, gunsmith, came at the same time under a similar contract. 
The sums mentioned are excessive when compared with the usual 
rates charged by Cadillac. 

52 



CADILLAC FOUNDS DETROIT 

for planting. Inside the fort the people owned twenty- 
nine small log -houses thatched with grass. Of the 
sixty-three settlers, thirt}^-four were traders, and the 
only profitable articles of traffic were ammunition and 
brandy, the English being able to undersell the French 
in all other commodities. Cadillac himself bought for 
four francs a quart the brandy that he sold for twenty 
francs; he charged two francs and ten sous a front rood 
for grounds within the palisades, and a double price 
for corner lots. Besides, each trader paid an annual 
tax of ten francs for the privilege of dealing with the 
Indians. 

" The soil is poor," continues d' Aigrement, " and is 
full of water ; it is fitted to raise Indian - corn and 
nothing else ; the cider made from native apples is as 
bitter as gall ; and the grasshoppers eat all the gar- 
den plants, so that they have to be planted three and 
four times over." " On the whole," says this pessi- 
mistic investigator, "the post was a mistake, and it 
should be abandoned." 

Admitting the truth of all that M. d' Aigrement has 
alleged, the colony at Detroit experienced only the vi- 
cissitudes usual to settlements in New France. The 
wilderness develops traits not pleasing to contemplate 
— jealousy, insubordination, and tyranny among them; 
and the intensity with which these elements of dis- 
cord operate depends on local circumstances and on 
race tendencies. Both Louis XIV. and Count Pont- 
chartrain understood the situation; and, within reason- 
able limits, they were ready to support the zealous 
Cadillac. 

Struggling resolutely to erect at Detroit a marquisate 
according to the feudal ideas of his day, in 1705 Cadillac 
wrested from the Company of the Colony the trading 

53 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

privileges at his post, and in addition obtained full au- 
thority to make grants of town lots within and of farms 
without the palisades. The fort itself belonged to him 
in the same sense that a French castle belonged to its 
lord; even the church, with its vestments, its bell, and 
its lock, belonged to the commandant; the brewery, 
the forge, the grist-mill, the very fruit-trees brought 
in boxes from Montreal, all were counted among Cadil- 
lac's personal possessions. His, too, was that appendage 
of feudalism, the great dove-cot set high on oak posts; 
and also the long warehouse with press for baling furs, 
and the barns for his abundant crops of wheat, his ten 
cattle, and his horse-of-all-work, known throughout the 
settlement by the name of Colin. 

As Cadillac walked the narrow St. Ann street, his 
sword clanking at his heels, and his rich military dress 
proclaiming his importance, every hat was doffed at his 
approach, and there was none to say him nay, save only 
Father Cherubin de Deniaux, the Eecollect priest of 
St. Ann. According to their custom the people took 
their petty disputes to the priest ; but justice, such as it 
was, came from the commandant, who claimed even the 
power of life and death. 

The space within the palisades was of a width of 
two city blocks and a depth of one. Besides Cadil- 
lac's own buildings — ten in number — the holdings of 
sixty-eight others are known ; and thirteen half-acre 
gardens granted to soldiers have been located. Above 
the fort thirty-one farms were apportioned to farmers 
who lived within the wooden defences; and at con- 
venient distances villages of Ottawas, Miamis, Hurons, 
Loups, and Openagos were located, while even the in- 
quisitive Iroquois were welcomed as visitors, although 
they were not encouraged to settle. Altogether, the 

54 






CADILLAC FOUNDS DETROIT 

town could boast a population of some six thousand souls 
or, better, mouths. 1 

The king, however, had other work for the restless 
and ambitious commandant at Detroit ; and in May, 
1710, Pontchartrain ordered him to proceed forthwith 
to Louisiana as the governor of the province that La- 
Salle and Henry Tonty had founded. With no mind to 
surrender his property without full compensation, Cadil- 
lac so far disregarded his orders as to go down to Mont- 
real and Quebec to settle his affairs, leaving his capable 
and business-like wife to secure a full and exact inventory 
of his possessions ; and when in June, 1713, he and his 
family landed in Louisiana, he was conveyed to his new 
station directly from France, as became his station, in a 
French frigate. Natchez owes its beginning and Lakes 
Pontchartrain and Maurepas owe their names to Cadil- 
lac ; he searched the Mississippi valley for silver and 
found lead ; but there as at Detroit he chafed under the 
conditions surrounding him, and in 1717 he returned to 
France to find employment as governor of Castell Sar- 
razin, where he died on October 18, 1730. In vain he 
tried to establish his claims at Detroit. The utmost he 
could obtain was an offer of 4359 livres, made in 1720 ; 
but this he rejected, and perhaps his governorship was 
intended as the gratitude of a monarchy. 2 

Cadillac turned over to his successor, Joseph Guyon 
Dubuisson, a fairly flourishing establishment, as such 



1 " Cadillac's Village, or Detroit under Cadillac, with a List of Prop- 
erty-owners and a History of the Settlement from 1701 to 1710," by 
Clarence M. Burton (Detroit, 1896). This pamphlet of thirty -five 
pages is a nearly complete city directory of Detroit under Cadillac, 
and is a marvel of antiquarian research in a hitherto unworked field. 

3 For the correspondence relative to Cadillac's claims, see Canadian 
Archives, 1887, p. cclxxvii. 

55 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

ventures went in those days. No sooner had Cadillac 
departed, however, than a thousand and more Mascou- 
tins and Ottagaraies from the region west of Green Bay 
appeared (1712) at Detroit and prepared to establish 
themselves there. Now the Mascoutins were deadly 
enemies of the Hurons ; but, unfortunately, both the 
Hurons and Ottawas were away on their winter hunt, 
and so weak was the garrison that, for the time being, 
Dubuisson was forced to put up with the lawlessness and 
insolence of the new-comers. They killed his pigeons, 
took whatever goods were outside the fort, and began 
to fortify a camp fixed within hailing distance of Fort 
Pontchartrain. In his consternation Dubuisson sent 
messengers to scour the woods for the absent hunters ; 
and he also took the precaution to pull down the church 
of StAnn, outside the palisades, lest it should afford 
a lodgement for the attacking Indians. Under fire he 
effected the removal of the wheat from the exposed 
storehouse to the fort : fortunately the cattle had not 
been sent to pasture. 

About the middle of May, as Dubuisson relates in his 
official report, 1 news came of the approach of the hunt- 
ing-parties. The two swivels were mounted on logs and 
provided with slings of iron made by the fort black- 
smith ; Father Cherubin held himself ready to give a 
general absolution, and to assist the wounded. Then 
Dubuisson himself mounted the bastion and watched 
for the expected help. Soon his straining eyes beheld a 
movement among the budding trees at the back of the 
long farms, and from the thick coverts rushed the sava- 
ges — Illinois, Missouris, Osages, Pottawatomies, Sacs, and 



1 This report is given entire in Smith's History of Wisconsin, vol. iii. 
See also Parkman's Half Century of Conflict, vol. i., p. 269. 

56 



CADILLAC FOUNDS DETROIT 

Menominees — with the Ottawa chief Saguina (Saginaw) 
at their head. Never before had Detroit seen such a col- 
lection of people. Kunning, yelping, waving their tribal 
emblems, the red host made for the Huron village, but 
were turned to the fort by the stay - at - homes, who 
pointed to the fires in the enemy's camp, crying, " They 
are burning the women of your village, Saguina, and 
your wife is among them. Hasten to our father's fort ; 
he has ever had pity on you, and now you should be 
willing to die for him." 

Into the fort swarmed the allies, and on the parade- 
ground held a council with the commandant, saying : 
" Father, last year you drew from the fires our flesh, 
which the Ottagamies were about to roast and eat. Now 
we bring you our bodies and make you master of them. 
Care for our women and children, and if we die throw a 
blade of grass upon our bones to protect them from the 
flies. And now give us something to eat and tobacco to 
smoke ; w r e have come from afar and have neither pow- 
der nor balls to fight with." These necessaries being 
forthcoming, the siege of the enemy was begun. For 
nineteen days the interlopers were kept under fire. 
Their kindred coming to join them were taken in the 
w T oods, and first were made targets of and then were 
burned for sport ; if brave or squaw ventured to the 
river for water, death was almost certain ; if they dug 
holes to escape the fire of the besiegers, the latter fired 
down on them from high towers. 

One morning the French saw the palisades of their 
enemies hung with scarlet blankets, while twelve other 
such sanguinary emblems flew from standards set up 
within the enclosure. " These," the Mascoutins called to 
the fort, " are the signals of the English. We have no 
father but the English king." The Pottawatomie chief, 

57 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

however, answered that the English were the enemies 
of prayer, so that the Master of Life chastises them ; 
and that their only power was in the liquor which they 
gave to the Indians to poison them. Then followed un- 
availing parleys, during which the enemies showed so 
bold a front that the allies became discouraged and 
threatened to go away. The enemies, they said, are 
braver than any other people ; it is useless to tight them. 
The French, too, began to talk of escaping to Michili- 
mackinac ; but Dubuisson was able to put heart into 
them all. Deserters told that in the beleaguered palisade 
over sixty women and children had died of hunger and 
thirst, and that their bodies were without burial ; and 
presents and promises were made without stint to the 
allies. Then, one dark and rainy night, the enemy 
slipped away to Grosse Pointe, where, after four days of 
fighting, the end came. Of the three hundred braves 
behind the improvised defences, not more than one-third 
escaped. The women and children were spared ; but 
the men were reserved for the sport of their conquerors, 
who killed three or four each day. So the first siege of 
Detroit ended in a bloody victory for the garrison, and 
the annihilation of the Ottagamies and Mascoutins. The 
price of the victory to the French treasury was about 
three thousand livres ; and one-eighth of this sum was re- 
quired to pay for the blankets, leggings, and shirts that 
formed the final equipment of the eight principal Indian 
allies on their enforced journey to the happy hunting- 
grounds. 

Misfortunes elsewhere aided the upbuilding of the new 
colony on the Detroit. The collapse of Law's brilliant 
system of administering the financial and commercial 
affairs of France in 1721 sent to America many a ruined 
Frenchman, and not a few found refuge at Detroit. 

58 



CADILLAC FOUNDS DETROIT 

Among the new-comers were the Chapoton, Goyon, 
and Lauderoute families, names that in one form or 
another are still numerous in the Detroit city direc- 
tory. 1 In 1730 Robert Navarre, in whose veins ran royal 
blood, established himself as royal notary and sub-dele- 
gate of the Intendant of New France, being the first 
civil magistrate to exercise his office within the present 
boundaries of the Northwest. Later, in 1755, the banish- 
ed Acadians, with Gabriel seeking the Beautiful River, 2 
left several of their number on the banks of a river not 
less beautiful than the Ohio. 

So uneventful for Detroit was the second quarter of 
the eighteenth century, that its history is to be read 
only in the account- books of Father de La Richardie, 
Superior of the Huron mission at Detroit. In these 
voluminous records of every - day life at Detroit it is 
shown that Cadillac was clearly right in sa} 7 ing that the 
priests, while occupied in saving souls, were most thrifty 
withal. Under the good father's able direction the gar- 
rison was reduced to dependence on the enterprising 
mission. When a cow was wanted to furnish an Indian 
barbecue, it was supplied by the mission farmer on Bois 
Blanc island, who held his well-stocked acres on the con- 
dition that he should furnish firewood, chickens, lard, 
and suet to the good fathers, and also give to the mis- 
sion half the produce of the farm. The blacksmith also 
worked on shares ; the mission storekeeper supplied the 

1 French proper names are somewhat of a puzzle even after the best 
of explanations available. The Casse family appeared in Detroit in 
Cadillac's time. They came from the town of St. Aubin, and for a 
time were called Casse dit St. Aubin; later, "Casse "disappeared, leav- 
ing the still persistent family of St. Aubin. Nicknames became family 
names; and a distinguished female ancestor often furnished the name 
by which her descendants were known. 

8 The Ohio was called by the French La Belle Riviere. 

59 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

commandant at the fort with both his canoes and his 
wines; and the small traders replenished their stocks of 
wampum- beads, vermilion, knives, powder, and ball at 
the mission store, where the lay-brother, La Tour, was 
in charge. Thus Father de la Richardie became the 
first wholesale merchant at Detroit ; and the exactness 
with which he kept the accounts is evidence that there 
was profit on other wares besides the masses, which 
are charged along with the vermilion, the chemises de 
femme, the wheat, and the wampum. 1 Besides his traffic 
in merchandise, the Superior of the Huron mission dealt 
in real estate, both within and outside of the palisades ; 
and it was due to him that the Hurons gave up their 
valuable possessions on the northern borders of the 
growing town, and removed their long houses to the 
mission domain of Father de la Eichardie, across the 
river, where the town of Sandwich now stands. 

In order to thwart the movements the English were 
making unceasingly to seduce the Indian nations of the 
North, Count Repentigny, a native of Canada and an en- 
sign in the French army, was sent about 1751 to Sault 
Ste. Marie, to make there a palisade fort to stop the Ind- 
ians on their way to the English posts ; and to seize the 
presents and to intercept the commerce that passed be- 

1 After the departure of Cadillac, opposition being withdrawn, the 
Jesuits had established themselves at Detroit during the rule of Al- 
phonse de Tonty, who was commandant from 1717 till his death, ten 
years later. Under the title of The Jesuit Manuscript, Mr. Richard R. 
Elliott published in the Detroit Sunday Neics, during May, 1891, full 
translations of these account-books. Files are in the Congressional 
Library and in the Detroit Public Library. From the entries it would 
appear that the Cuilleriers, husband and wife, were among the princi- 
pal traders: Charles St. Aubiu dealt in furs ; Parent was the carpen- 
ter ; Derruisseau sapped the maples ; Carrigan de Cealle and M. 
Goyon were the millers. 

60 




JVmit ]c^ 



INDIAN HUNTER OF 1750 



CADILLAC FOUNDS DETROIT 

tween the Upper Lake savages and the rivals of France. 
The post was to be also a retreat for the French voya- 
geurs trading in the northwestern country ; and to that 
end land was to be cleared, Indiau-corn was to be 
planted, and stock was to be supplied, all at the expense 
of Repentigny and his partner. Captain Louis De Bonne. 
In return for such services they received, on October 18, 
1750, a grant " in perpetuity by title of feof and seign- 
iory " of six leagues along the portage with a depth of 
six leagues. During the four years of his stay, the 
young count reared a small fort, cleared and planted a 
few acres, built three or foul* log-huts for his men, and 
for stock brought thither seven head of cattle and two 
horses ; but the victories of war were more to the taste 
of Chevalier Repentigny than were the triumphs of 
peace, and at the battle of Sillery, in 1760, he fought by 
the side of his partner De Bonne in the vain attempt to 
recapture Quebec from the English. It was De Bonne's 
last fight ; and when England won the French posses- 
sions in the new world, Repentigny, refusing the most 
pressing offers from the British governor to return to his 
northern seigniory and cast his lot with the conquerors, 
left his native country first to fight the Indians in New- 
foundland, and finally to become a major-general and 
the governor of Senegal, in which honorable position 
death overtook him in 1786. Meantime the Indians, in 
1762, burned his fort, and the lands once more became 
the hunting and fishing grounds of the red men, and so 
continued for half a century.' 

1 la 1824-5 the original brevet of ratification of the De Bonne-Re- 
pentigny grant, signed by the King of France, was presented to Mr. 
Graham, the Commissioner of the General Land Office. During all 
the intervening years the De Bonne rights had been transferred from 
person to person ; first by De Bonne's son, who sold to James Cald- 

61 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Throughout the Northwest, at the numerous portages 
between the headwaters of the rivers, French traders 
and woodrangers established themselves, obtaining sup- 
plies from Quebec and Montreal, or from the nearer 
posts of Detroit or Michilimackinac. Little by little the 
power of the government relaxed, and the individual 
trader became the controlling force. At Detroit the 
French inhabitants intermarried scarcely at all with 
the Indians; and generally family pride held back the 
thrifty Frenchman from open alliances with Indian 
maidens ; but in the remote settlements there was no 
such hesitation. There Frenchman and Indian slept in 
the same hut and ate out of the same dish. It will 
not be strange if they shall be found shooting with the 
same gun. 

well, of Albany, New York, for £15701. The final possessor was 
John Rolton, a lieutenant-colonel in the English army. Neither Re- 
pentigny nor any of his descendants ever transferred their interests by 
will or deed ; but in 1800 and again in 1846 the Repentigny heirs 
formally asserted their claims. On April 19, 1860, Congress authorized 
the two sets of claimants to proceed in the courts ; aud accordingly 
the cause was tried, first, in the United States District Court at Detroit, 
where the claimants were successful ; and finally in the Supreme 
Court, where the decree of the court below was reversed. The case 
was argued by Jacob M. Howard for the claimants, and by Attorney- 
General Stanbery and United States District Attorney Alfred Russell 
for the government. The title of the case is the United States vs. 
Louise Pauline le Gardiur de Repentigny et al., reported in 8 Wall. 
As to the Repentigny claims, the court held that the count, on refus- 
ing to become a British subject aud in failing to claim his possessions 
at Sault Ste. Marie within the time specified in the treaty between 
France and England, abandoned his rights ; the De Bonne claims 
were rejected on the ground that failure to maintnin the fort and 
settlement caused the lauds to revert to the State, and that the United 
States, by survej'ing and selling the lands, had worked such reversion. 



CHAPTER III 
THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

The daring enterprise of the French trader and the 
devoted heroism of the French missionary in their dis- 
covery of the Northwest have been related. Up the 
rapids of the St. Lawrence, through the chain of the vast 
inland seas, and down the rushing waters of the Mis- 
sissippi swept the tide of French discovery. With the 
exception of a strip of land lying along the Atlantic and 
extending scarcely a hundred miles back into the wilder- 
ness, the continent of North America at the middle of 
the eighteenth century belonged to his most Christian 
majesty by the well-recognized right of discovery and 
occupation. In the court of nations it mattered nothing 
that the soil was in the actual possession not of French- 
men but of Indians, and that the foot of white man 
had never trod more than the smallest fraction of the 
country over which France claimed dominion. While 
recognizing the policy of conciliating the Indians, France, 
nevertheless, claimed the exclusive right to acquire 
from them, and to dispose of, the land which they oc- 
cupied, and to make laws for the government of the 
country. 

In the year 1498, more than a third of a century be- 
fore Jacques Cartier's little vessel ploughed her way up 
the broad St. Lawrence, the Cabots discovered the conti- 
nent of North America, and sailed south as far as Virginia. 

63 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Acting; under their charter 1 to discover countries then 
unknown to Christian people, and to take possession of 
them in the name of the King of England, these bold 
adventurers laid the foundations of the English title to 
the Atlantic coast. 2 It was not until the beginning of 
the seventeenth century, however, that France and 
England followed up their discoveries, and began to per- 
fect their respective titles by actual occupation of the 
regions discovered by their venturesome navigators. 

In the year 1584, Sir Walter Ealeigh, " the first man 
in England who had a right conception of the advan- 
tages of settlements abroad," and the only person who 
at that time had a thorough insight into trade and the 
proper methods of promoting it, " looked through the 
work of an age at one glance " and saw how advan- 
tageous it might be made to the trade of England to 
people the new world. 3 Applying to that most enter- 
prising of monarchs, Queen Elizabeth, he secured from 
his royal patron free liberty and license to discover, 
search, find out and view remote, heathen, and barbar- 
ous lands not actually possessed of any Christian prince, 
nor inhabited by Christian people." 

1 The Voyages of the Cabots, Old South Leaflets, general series, No. 37. 

2 " So early as the year 1496, her (England's) monarch granted a 
commission to the Cabots, to discover countries then unknown to 
Christian people, and to take possession of them in the name of the 
King of England. Two years afterwards Cabot proceeded on this 
voyage, and discovered the continent of North America, along which 
he sailed as far south as Virginia. To this discovery the English 
trace their title." — Opiniou by Mr. Chief-justice Marshall, Johnson 
vs. Mcintosh, 8 Wheatou, p. 571. 

3 An Account of the European Settlements in America, vol. ii., p. 218. 
This work, published anonymously, was written by Edmund Burke. 

4 Historical Collections, consisting of State Papers, by Ebenezer 
Hazard, contains Raleigh's patent, the assignment of it, the first and 
second charters of Virginia, and other like important documents. 

64 




SEBASTIAN CABOT 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

Kaleigh himself Avas too much engrossed with affairs 
of state to lead colonists in America ; but in 1585 his 
captain, Sir Richard Grenville, founded upon Roanoke 
Island, in the present State of North Carolina, the first 
English settlement established on the continent of North 
America. The times, however, forbade the success of 
the undertaking; for the invincible Spanish Armada 
must be destroyed before colonization could flow un- 
vexed across the seas. Thus it happened that it was not 
until 1607 that Raleigh's successors planted at James- 
town the first permanent English settlement in America. 
In 1609, under a new and enlarged charter, the " Treas- 
urer and Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City 
of London for the First Colony in Virginia" became 
possessed in absolute property of the lands extending 
along the sea-coast two hundred miles north and the 
same distance south from Old Point Comfort, and into 
the land throughout from sea to sea. 1 

Again, in 1620, a charter was granted to the Duke of 
Lenox and others, organized under the name of the Plym- 
outh Company, conveying to them all the lands be- 
tween the fortieth and the forty-eighth degrees of north 
latitude. In the course of time these special charters 
were either annulled or surrendered, and the title to the 
lands revested in the crown, to be disposed of from time 
to time as his majesty might see fit, in creating colonies 
along the Atlantic. 

These early grants of lands, stretching from the known 

1 It was then believed that the parallel 40° was two hundred miles 
north of Cape Comfort. The instruments of measurement, however, 
were clumsy, and the computed length of a degree was not accurate, 
as Sir Isaac Newton found, nearly a century later. See " The Limits 
of Virginia," by Hon. Littleton W. Tazewell, in the Virginia Histori- 
cal Register, 1848, p. 17. 

e 65 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Atlantic back through unknown regions to the illusive 
South Sea dreamed of by adventurers through the ages, 
comprised within their infinite parallels all the North- 
west save only the upper two-thirds of the present States 
of Michigan and Wisconsin. The lines of Virginia in- 
cluded the lower half of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois ; Con- 
necticut, by virtue of her charter, claimed the upper half 
of that territory ; and Massachusetts likewise obtained 
the shadow of a title to the southern half of Wisconsin 
and of the low T er peninsula of Michigan. However, it 
was not until the Treaty of 1763 brought these regions 
within the actual possession of the British crown that 
the claims of Connecticut and Massachusetts could be 
made even upon paper. New York, too, had unsub- 
stantial claims to the Ohio country, based on the con- 
quests of its allies the Iroquois. 

In 1624, the Virginia corporation having been dis- 
solved by due process of law, both the powers of gov- 
ernment and the title to the lands revested in the crown 
of England. 1 Thus the colony was changed from a pro- 
prietary to a royal government, and the lands within its 

1 By the judgment of the Court of King's Bench on a writ of quo 
warranto, 8 Wheaton, pp. 545, 578. 

The phrase " due process of law " must be regarded as a legal fiction. 
The facts are that King James, acting under Spanish influences, be- 
came jealous of the growth and power of the London Company, and 
determined to put an end to it. When Parliament would have re- 
sented such action against the interests of many of its members who 
were also members of the company, the Speaker read a message from 
the king, forbidding that body to meddle with the matter ; and later, 
when the case on the quo warranto came up before the Court of King's 
Bench, the Attorney-general gravely argued that the company, under 
its charter, might depopulate England to people Virginia. Such a 
catastrophe being too dreadful to contemplate, the Chief-justice de- 
clared the charter thenceforth to be null and void. See Fiske's Old 
Virginia and Her Neighbors, vol. i., p. 219. 

66 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

borders were at the disposal of the king, and so con- 
tinued until Virginia became a free and independent 
State. For a century from the dissolution of the Vir- 
ginia corporation and the establishment of the royal 
government, the colonists found the lands east of the 
Alleghanies sufficiently extensive for their uses. They 
had come to the JSTew World to establish homes for 
themselves and their posterity ; and while an occasion- 
al trader penetrated the wilderness of the interior to 
barter with the Indians, yet there was in Virginia no 
organized traffic with the savages, such as flourished 
in Pennsylvania and JNew York. 1 

The early colonists of Virginia had spread themselves 
over the country. Towns were few and there was no 
general trade. Selecting a commanding site on the 
banks of one of the numerous tidewater streams, the 
Virginia planter reared his stately mansion of wood, 
fashioned on the lines of a Greek temple. There, sur- 
rounded by his black slaves and white dependents, he 
lived his solitary life in true patriarchal style. Negroes 
imported from Africa tilled his broad acres planted with 
tobacco, a product that, like the flocks of early times, 
played the double part of the medium and the material 
of exchange. His one vital connection with the great 
world was the annual ship that came from England, 
bringing both the necessities and the luxuries of civiliza- 
tion ; and returned laden with tobacco consigned to the 

1 In a letter to the Council of Trade, dated December 15, 1710, 
Governor Spotswood proposed a plau for carrying the Virginia settle- 
ments to the source of the James River, beyond the Blue Ridge, with 
a view of interposing between the French on the St. Lawrence and 
those on the Mississippi, and also to establishing trade with the Ind- 
ians. From this letter it is to be inferred that there were already a 
few Virginia traders. Spotswood's Official Letters, Richmond, 1882, 
p. 40. 

07 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

planter's London agent, who not only sold the product, 
but also made purchases of clothing, furniture, books, 
and wines for the planter's use. Royalists, aristocrats, 
firm believers in Church and State, these Virginians kept 
up all the traditions of England. Often they sent their 
sons to the mother-country to be educated ; the young 
men served in the British army or navy during the fre- 
quent wars waged between England and France ; and 
members of the British nobility, together with naval 
officers of rank and reputation, were welcome sharers of 
the abundant hospitality proverbial among the planters. 
The Washington family tnay be taken as a type of 
tidewater Virginians. Belonging to the party of the 
king, the brothers John and Andrew Washington had 
come to America about the middle of the seventeenth 
century, when so many of the cavaliers found it con- 
venient to escape from the rule of Cromwell. They 
purchased land between the Potomac and Rappahan- 
nock ; John married, became a considerable planter, a 
fighter against the Indians, and a member of the House 
of Burgesses. As the family persisted from generation 
to generation, the estate increased ; and three-quarters 
of a century after the coming of the brothers to Amer- 
ica, the great-grandson of John had become the head of 
an established and influential colonial family. In the 
war that broke out between Spain and France and 
England in 1740, this Lawrence Washington went to 
the West Indies as a captain in the colonial regiment 
raised to aid the king ; and during his military service 
he formed the acquaintance of men of the great world. 
As his father and grandfathers before him had set them- 
selves to add to their domains, so Lawrence Washington 
was anxious to increase his holdings of land ; and to 
this end he and his brother Augustine joined others of 

68 




L A W 1{ E N C E \V ASHIN G TON 
(From a portrait by an unknown artist, in possession of I. 

Virginia.) 



awreuce Washington, Alexandria, 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

like wealth and influence with themselves to organize a 
company for the purpose of settling the western country 
and trading with the Indians. 

Lawrence Washington had married a daughter of 
the Hon. William Fairfax, whose cousin, Lord Fairfax, 
inherited the rich lands of the Culpeper grant made by 
Charles II., and comprising, in part, the greater portion 
of the Shenandoah Valley. Lord Fairfax was a grad- 
uate of Oxford ; in early life he had been a man of 
fashion in London ; and he had actually contributed one 
or two papers to the Spectator. A disappointment in 
love had driven him into the wilderness of the New 
World ; and in the midst of the beautiful Shenandoah 
Valley he had built for himself a home that served as 
a resting-place between fox-hunts, and a place of busi- 
ness in his dealings with his tenants and the settlers to 
whom he sold his broad acres. The favorite compan- 
ion of his lordship was George Washington, a younger 
brother of Lawrence. Young Washington, then a strap- 
ping youth of sixteen, enjoyed to the utmost the sport 
of riding to hounds ; but his occupation was to make 
the surveys necessary for the sale of the lands to the 
thousands of immigrants then flocking into the fertile 
valley. 1 

DuriLg the first half of the eighteenth century there 

1 In August, 1716, Governor Spotswood, leading a party of fifteen 
gentlemen, rangers, pioneers, Indians, and servants into the Shenan- 
doah Valley, had reached the watershed between the rivers flowing 
into the Atlantic and those emptying into the Ohio. That the party 
was a merry one may be inferred from the fact that they drank the 
health of King George the First in Virginia wine both red and white, 
Irish usquebaugh, brandy, shrub, two kinds of rum, champagne, 
canary, cherry-punch, and cider. The distance traversed was 219 
miles from Williamsburg. Campbell's Virginia (Philadelphia, 1860), 
p. 387. 

69 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

came into Virginia a numerous immigration, chiefly from 
Germany and the north of Ireland. Edmund Burke. 
writing in 1761, places the number of white people in 
Virginia at between sixty and seventy thousand; 1 and. 
he says, " they are growing every day more numerous 
by the migration of the Irish, who, not succeeding so 
well in Pennsylvania as the more frugal and industrious 
Germans, sell their lands in that province to the latter, 
and take up new ground in the more remote counties 
in Virginia, Maryland, and Xorth Carolina. These are 
chiefly Presbyterians from the northern part of Ireland, 
who in America are generally called Scotch-Irish/' So 
early this new force in American affairs found recogni- 
tion in England." 

It is well worth while here to trace the causes that 
led to results so overmastering in the making of the 
Northwest. About the time when the English colonists 
were planting themselves at Jamestown, another immi- 
gration, also under the auspices of James I., was going 
into Ireland, where the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel, 
leaders in the great Catholic rebellions, were driven 
from the country and their confiscated estates parcelled 
among a body of Scotch and English sent across the 

1 European Settlements in America, ii., p. 216. (Fifth edition. 1770.) 
-: The population of Pennsylvania increased from 20.000 in 1701 to 
250.000 in 1749, largely through the immigration of Scotch-Irish, and 
Germans from the Palatinate. James Logan, the Scotch-Irish gov- 
ernor of Pennsylvania during this period, was a Quaker, and had small 
love for Presbyterians. Through his efforts they were forced to the 
frontiers, where they formed an efficient barrier against the Indians. 
See The Puritan in Holland, England, and America, by Douglass Camp- 
bell, ii., p. 484. 

Burke's estimate of the population is much too low. In 1715 there 
were in Virginia 72.500 whites and 23,000 negroes. Only Massa- 
chusetts could show a larger population. See Official Letters of 
Alexander Spotswood, p. xi. 

70 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

border to occupy them. The new-comers made those 
once barren lands to blossom like the rose ; and by the 
famous defence of Londonderry they saved the throne 
to William of Orange and the realm to Protestantism. 
At the beginning of the eighteenth century these stanch 
Presbj^terians fell a victim to test -oaths designed to 
suppress popery, but used as effectually to check Pres- 
byterianism. Added to the religious persecution were 
the burdensome restraints on commerce that in Ireland 
were but the prelude to those later commercial restric- 
tions which were to alienate the American colonies from 
the mother-country. Then, too, came the extortionate 
rents and the resulting evictions that in two years drove 
thirt} r thousand Scotch -Irish to seek a more abiding 
home beyond the seas, where, on the frontiers of Mary- 
land and Virginia, Rev. Francis Makemie, in 1683, had 
founded the first Presbyterian churches in America/ 

Toleration Acts for a time put a check to this whole- 
sale depopulation of the north of Ireland, but when 
in 1728 persecution again commenced, Ulster began to 
send annually twelve thousand persons to " a land where 
there was no legal robbery, and where those who sowed 
the seed could reap the harvest.'' This human stream 
struck eastern Pennsylvania, then turned southward 
through Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. In 
1738, the Scotch-Irish in large numbers entered the val- 
ley beyond the Blue Ridge, and, with the exception of 



1 In Virginia the Presbyterians were the first sect to make headway 
against the prevailing intolerance. The conflict was carried on by 
Makemie, for whose followers the Toleration Act of William and 
Mary brought small share of indulgence. In 1699 there were but 
three or four Presbyterian meeting-houses in the colony. Three- 
quarters of a century later two-thirds of the population were dissent- 
ers. Lodge's English Colonies in America, p. 56. 

71 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

some German settlements near the lower end, com- 
pletely possessed it. So strong in numbers were they 
that in this year the Synod of Philadelphia, at the in- 
stance of John Caldwell, the grandfather of John Cald- 
well Calhoun, sent a commissioner to propose to the 
governor of Virginia that the Scotch-Irish would pro- 
tect the colon}' - against the Indians provided only " that 
they be allowed the liberty of their consciences and of 
worshipping God in a way agreeable to the principles of 
their education." To this proposition Governor Gooch 
made gracious answer ; and thus it happened that for a 
time the free Bible secured the services of the trusty rifle. 1 
During the spring of 1748, George Washington, while 
making surve} T s in the Shenandoah Valley, obtained his 
first experience of border life and border people. Tramp- 
ing amid beautiful groves of sugar-trees, paddling past 
lands yielding an abundance of grain, hemp, and tobacco, 
he ran the lines of Lord Fairfax's possessions with an 
accuracy that has since become proverbial. At night 
he rolled himself in a blanket and lay down on a little 
hay or a bearskin, with man, wife, and children, like 
dogs and cats ; and happy was he who got the berth 
nearest the fire. At Colonel Cresap's he shared the lim- 
ited accommodations of the place with a band of thirty 
Indians coming from war with a single scalp; and for 
amusement he supplied the liquors necessary to induce a 
war-dance, which struck the hard-headed young surveyor 
as highly comical. 2 

1 The Scotch-Irish of the South. An address at the Scotch-Irish 
Congress, 1889, by Hon. William Wirt Henry. Proceedings, p. 117. 

Gooch resigned in 1749. The latter years of his term were embit- 
tered by his attempts to suppress heterodox opinions, which attempts 
bad the usual results. See Lodge's English Colonies in America, p. 29. 

2 Sparks's Washington, vol. ii., contains Washington's letters and 
journals covering this period of his career. 

72 




WASHINGTON AS A 8URVEYOK 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

In this year 1748, while the rich lands of the garden 
of Virginia were being laid off and populated, the enter- 
prising men of the colony put their heads together to 
secure the territory beyond the Alleghanies, but still 
within the chartered limits of the province. The prime 
mover in the scheme was Thomas Lee, the president of 
his majesty's Virginia council, and with him were asso- 
ciated, among others, Lawrence and Augustine Wash- 
ington, half-brothers of George. The London partner 
was Thomas Hanbury, a merchant of wealth and influ- 
ence. Taking the name of the Ohio Company, the as- 
sociates presented to the king a petition for half a mill- 
ion acres of land on the south side of the Ohio Kiver, 
between the Monongahela and the Kanawha rivers, with 
the privilege of selecting a portion of the lands on the 
north side. Two hundred thousand acres were to be 
taken up at once ; one hundred families were to be seated 
within seven years, and a fort was to be built as a pro- 
tection against hostile Indians. The king readily as- 
sented to a proposition which promised an effective and 
inexpensive means of occupying the Ohio valley, which 
was claimed by the French by right of discovery and 
occupation. These claims France was just then in a 
mood to make good. 

Orders having been sent to the Virginia government 
to make the grant to the Ohio Company, the projectors 
of the scheme ordered two cargoes of goods suitable for 
the Indian trade ; they began to construct roads across 
the mountains, and prepared to send out an explorer 
both to look over the lands, and also to arrange for an 
Indian council at which the Virginia authorities should 
treat with the savages for the Indian title to the lands 
within the grant. 

Before the company's agent could take the field, 

73 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

France had decided upon her course of action. "While 
the French government, either at home or in Canada, 
could do little to prevent individual English traders 
from wandering at will through the forest towns, the 
formation of the Ohio Company under royal sanction, 
proposing as it did to carve a half-million acres out of 
what the French regarded as their domain, was not a 
matter to be tossed to and fro like a shuttlecock between 
the Cabinet at Versailles and the Cabinet at St. James. 
The ministers of his most Christian Majesty now dropped 
idle discussions as to the whereabouts of " ancient boun- 
daries " mentioned in the Treaty of Utrecht, and put 
aside their vain attempts to convince the London court 
that the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was intended to de- 
fine and not to confuse the limits of empire. The French 
proceeded to take the only course left open to them. 
They occupied the Ohio Valley in force. 

Preliminary to more active military operations, the 
Chevalier Celoron de Bienville, with a band of more than 
two hundred French officers and Canadian soldiers and 
boatmen, was sent to take formal possession of the Ohio. 
Up the turbulent St. Lawrence, across placid Lake On- 
tario, around the far-sounding falls of Niagara, along the 
shores of fitful Lake Erie the flotilla of twenty-three 
birch-bark canoes skimmed its rapid way during the ver- 
dant June and the hot July of 1749. Striking across 
country to Lake Chautauqua, the frail barks were again 
launched on that beautiful sheet of water, and thence a 
path was found to the headwaters of the Alleghany. 
Floating down this river and the Ohio, the fleet stopped 
now to treat with the Indians at one of their numerous 
villages, and again to bury at the mouth of some tribu- 
tary a lead plate inscribed with the flower-de-luce and 
bearing a legend to the effect that thus the French re- 

74 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

newed their possession of the river Ohio, and of all those 
rivers that flow into it, as far as their sources, " the same 
as was enjoyed, or ought to have been enjoyed by the 
preceding kings of France, and that they have main- 
tained by their arms and treaties, especially by those of 
Ryswick, Utrecht, and Aix-la-Chapelle." ' 

From the Ohio the party of occupation made its way 
up the Miami to Lake Erie, and thence to Quebec. In 
several of the Indian villages, Celoron had found Eng- 
lish traders. These he sent back to the colonies with 
warnings not to trespass upon French territory ; while 
the Indians who harbored them were warned of the 
wrath of their father, the French king, in case they con- 
tinued to receive the English traders — warnings which 
the savages were not inclined to heed. The fact was 
that the English traders offered better bargains than did 
the French , and the Indians were quick to perceive 
that their interest lay in competition between the white 
races. 

Nothing daunted by the theatrical expedition of Cele- 
ron, the Ohio Company, in September, 1750, called from 
his home on the Yadkin that shrewd and hardy pioneer, 
Christopher Gist. No better selection could have been 
made. Gist's father had surveyed the western shore of 
Maryland, and had aided in laying out the town of Bal- 
timore , and the son had inherited the father's liking for 
out-door life. The quality of the English blood in his 
veins is attested by the fact that one son, Richard, was 
killed in the battle of King's Mountain ; another son, 
Nathaniel, was a colonel in the Virginia line during the 
Revolution, and was the progenitor of Montgomery 

1 See De Hass's Western Virginia for a drawing of the plate found at 
the mouth of the Kanawha. 

75 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Blair, Francis P. Blair^and B. Gratz Brown. 1 Gist's in- 
structions directed him " to go out as soon as possible td 
the westward of the great mountains in order to search 
out and discover the lands upon the river Ohio (and 
other adjoining branches of the Mississippi) down as low 
as the great falls thereof." He was to observe the wa} T s 
and passes through the mountains ; the width and depth 
of the rivers ; what nations of Indians inhabit the lands, 
whom they trade with, and in what the}'' deal. In par- 
ticular he was to mark all the good level lands, so that 
they might easily be found ; for it was the purpose of 
the company to go all the way down to the Mississippi 
if need were, in order not to take mean, broken land. 2 

On the last day of October, Gist set out from Colonel 
Cresap's, on the Potomac, in Maryland, and followed an 
old Indian path up the Juniata. Sleeping in Indian 
cabins, living on bear and wild turkey, braving rain and 
snow, throwing off fever by a resort to the Indian cus- 
tom of going into a sweat-house, Gist was twenty-five 
days in reaching the Seneca village of Logstown, eigh- 
teen miles down the Ohio from the present site of Pitts- 
burg. There he found a parcel of reprobate Indian 
traders from Pennsylvania, at whose hands he would 
have fared badly indeed, had he not represented him- 
self as the king's messenger. He inquired for George 
Croghan, the idol of the Pennsylvania Scotch-Irish ; and 
found that the veteran trader, with Andrew Montour, the 
interpreter, was a week's journey in advance. At Beaver 
Creek, Gist fell in with Barney Curran, an Ohio Com- 
pany's trader, and together they struck across country 
to the Muskingum, where was an Indian town of a hun- 

1 Lowderniilk's Cumberland (Washington, 1878), p. 28. 

2 "Journal of Christopher Gist's Journey," printed in Pownall's 
Topographical Description of North America (London, 1776). 

76 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

dred families. As Gist's party came in sight of the 
place, their eyes were rejoiced by the sight of two Eng- 
lish flags snapping in the brisk December wind ; and 
on inquiring the cause, he found that George Croghan 
had raised one flag over the chief's lodge and another 
over his own, and had sent out runners to call the Ind- 
ians to council over the capture of some English traders 
by the French. It transpired that two of Croghan's 
men had been taken by a band of forty Frenchmen and 
twenty Indians, and had been hurried to the French post 
at Presqu' Isle, on Lake Erie. Croghan received Gist 
with satisfaction. 

On Christmas day, Gist proposed to read the prayers 
appointed by the Church of England. Croghan's follow- 
ers, however, had no desire to worship after the manner 
of the king's religion, and had it not been for the good 
offices of the local blacksmith, Thomas Burney, and the 
interpreter, Andrew Montour, this pious purpose must 
have failed. These two white men collected a congre- 
gation of Indians ; and probably that Christmas of 1750 
was the occasion when first the doctrines of salvation, 
faith, and good works were expounded by a Protestant 
within the boundaries of the Northwest. The result was 
embarrassing. The Indians immediately implored Gist 
to settle among them, baptize their children, and per- 
form their marriage ceremonies. They loved the English, 
they said, but heretofore had seen little religion among 
them ! 

It was not until the middle of January that the Ind- 
ians assembled in council. Then Croghan acquainted 
the savages that the great king over the water had sent 
them a large present of goods in care of the Governor of 
Virginia, and had invited them to partake of his charity. 
The Indians replied that they would consider the matter 

77 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

in the great council when spring was come : and with 
that the envoys, being satisfied, departed. Coming to 
White Woman's Creek, they found dwelling there with 
her Indian husband and her half-breed children. Mary 
Harris, then fifty years old. When but ten years of 
age she had been captured in New England by allies of 
the French ; and she still remembered that the people 
used to be very religious in her native country, and won- 
dered that white men could be so wicked as she had 
found them in the Ohio woods. 

On the Scioto Creek they came to a Delaware vil- 
lage, where they were well received : and at the mouth of 
that stream they found the Shawanese. who also were 
friendly, for in times gone by the English had saved the 
Shawanese when attacked by the Six Nations. Both of 
these tribes promised that they would meet the Virgin- 
ians at Logstown in the spring. Then Gist, with Cro- 
ghan. Montour, and Robert Kallendar, turned his face 
northward, and after a journey of 150 miles came to the 
Tawightwi town (Piqaa), on the Miami, in the present 
Ohio county of that name. "With the English colors at 
their head, the little band marched into the capital of the 
powerful western confederacy, the strongest Indian town 
in that part of the continent. Amid the firing of guns 
the ambassadors of the colonies were received by the 
English traders, and by the chief, who raised the Eng- 
lish flag above his own lodge. The Ta wight wis. or 
Miamis. were a numerous people, made up of many 
tribes, each tribe having a chief : and one of these eh 
was selected to rule the entire nation. Formerly t. 
lived on the Wabash, but latterly they had removed to 
the Miami, in order to deal with the English traders, 
who offered them much better bargains than did the 
French. At this time they were on friendly terms with 



THE ENGLISH IN THE O H 1 C D N . 

the Six Nations, who were their natural rivals: for the 
mis in the west were quite as powerful a confederacy 
as were the Six Nations in the east. 

Assembled in the long-house of the nation, on Sunday, 
the 17th of February. 1751. the council was opened by 
the eter Montour, with the usual formalities of 

- king wampum belts. Then he gave greeting to 
the chiefs : " You have made a road for our brothers the 
_lish to come and trade among yon : but it is now 
very foul, great logs are fallen across id we would 

have you be strong like men. and have one heart with 
us to make the road clear, that our brothers, the Eng- 
lish, may have free course and recourse between you and 
us. In the sincerity of our beans we send you these 
four strings of wampum." To this the Indians gave 
their usual grunt of yo-ho. meaning. " TVe will see." At 
noon on Wednesday, the chiefs, arrayed in the shirts. 
blank* ts nd paint that the Ohio Company's agent had 
provided, entered the long-house, to smoke the calumet 
with their visitors : and the next day Croghau on behalf 
of the Pennsylvania authorities gave presents to the 
value of £1 The Miamis professed friendship: and 

their profession was speedily put to the tes:. 

Whil- C roghan and Gist were still at Piqua. foni 
tawas from the Detroit appeared in the council-house. 
y brought with them a French flag, which they 
9ed by the side of the British ensign : and to the usual 
strings of wampum they added ten pounds of tobacco 
aud two Legs : the milk of the wil - Iso < lied 

French brandy. " The French king." said the Ottawa 
envoys. " had made clean the road to his officers, and he 
had sent an invitation to the Mi visit his pos> " 

To this riend. the Piankesha chief, replied that 

foul and bloody was the way to the French, who had 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

made prisoners of some of the English, whom the Miamis 
regarded as their brothers. Therefore had they cleared 
the way for the English. So the Ottawas were forced 
to return unsuccessful. 

Gratified by his success, Gist parted from his com- 
panions, and returned to the Shawanese town near the 
mouth of the Scioto, where the Miami alliance was cele- 
brated with feasting and firing. Then he floated down 
the Ohio nearly to the present site of Louisville. It was 
now the 18th of March; Gist had been journeying for 
four months and a half; he had accomplished every- 
thing he had set out to do; and with a light heart he 
turned his face to the south, intending to make his way 
homeward up the valley of the Cuttawa, or Kentucky, 
Eiver. Glorious beyond description were the sights that 
greeted his ravished eyes as from hill -top after hill- 
top the wild and beautiful scenery of Kentucky in its 
robes of freshest green lay spread out before him. It 
was May when he poled his hastily built raft across the 
Great Kanawha; and it was almost June when, weary 
and footsore, he reached the banks of the Yadkin, to 
find as his only welcome a deserted cabin and the un- 
mistakable signs of an Indian massacre. Happily, how- 
ever, his own family had been spared, and had taken 
refuge at a Roanoke settlement. 

The death of Mr. Lee, soon after the Ohio Company 
was launched, threw the active management into the 
hands of Lawrence Washington, who entered into the 
project zealously. On making overtures to the Pennsyl- 
vania Dutch, who had come into the Shenandoah Valley, 
he found that their one objection to taking up lands on 
the Ohio was that they would be compelled to support 
a clergyman of the Established Church, when few under- 
stood and none made use of him. lie therefore wrote to 

80 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 
/ 
Mr. Hanbury, in the hope that the latter might obtain 

from the king some sort of a charter to prevent the 
residents on the Ohio and its branches being subject to 
parish taxes. " I am well assured," he continues, " that 
we shall never obtain it by law here. This colony was 
greatly settled the latter part of Charles the First's 
time, and during the usurpation, by zealous churchmen ; 
and that spirit, which was then brought in, has ever 
since continued, so that except a few Quakers we have 
no dissenters. But what has been the consequence? 
We have increased by slow degrees, except negroes and 
convicts, while our neighboring colonies, whose natural 
advantages are greatly inferior to ours, have become 
populous." To Governor Dinwiddie, then in London, 
Lawrence Washington also wrote that the Dutch would 
take fifty thousand acres of the company's lands, pro- 
vided they could be assured of religious freedom ; but 
the governor, although he was heartily interested in the 
project, despaired of obtaining from an over-busy parlia- 
ment and ministry the attention necessary to procure 
the requisite exemption. Thus, at the very beginning, 
arose that question of religious freedom which was to 
find such ample recognition when the great charter of 
the Northwest came to be written. 

In June, 1752, the Indians met Gist and the Virginian 
commissioners at Logstown, and in spite of French in- 
trigues, made a treaty whereby the Ohio Company was 
to be allowed to make settlements south of the Ohio, 
and to build a fort at the forks of that river. Indeed, 
the Indians had urged upon Croghan that the Pennsjd- 
vanians build such a fort ; but the Pennsylvania as- 
sembly had neglected their opportunities, and had ut- 
terly failed to support Croghan in his dealings with 
the Indians. Gist surveyed the company's lands; he re- 

P 81 , 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

moved his own habitation from the Yadkin, and began 
the erection of a fortified trading -post at Shurtees 
Creek, on the east bank of the Ohio, a little below the 
present site of Pittsburg. Thus far everything promised 
well for the Ohio project. The Indians were well dis- 
posed to the English; colonial traders overran the entire 
country from the very gates of Montreal to the Missis- 
sippi ; and but for the posts on the Great Lakes and 
their connecting waters, together with Vincennes on 
the Wabash and Fort Chartres in the Illinois country, 
the English were at liberty to push their settlements 
and their trade throughout the regions inhabited by the 
most powerful tribes, and comprising the richest lands 
on the continent. Unfortunately for British interests, 
however, mutual jealousies among the colonies, together 
with that deliberation in action which is characteristic 
of popular governments, prevented prompt and harmoni- 
ous action until France had found a means of compel- 
ling the fickle savages to renounce their new friends 
and to aid their ancient allies. 

Meanwhile the French were not altogether idle. 
Celoron de Bienville, now the commandant at Detroit, 
was engaged in planting on the fertile banks of the 
strait the French families that liberal subsidies in farm 
implements had drawn thither; and at this time the 
town could boast a population of nearly five hundred 
whites — the largest French settlement west of Montreal. 
He was ordered from Quebec to drive the English 
traders from the Miami villages, and thus to realize 
his occupation of the Ohio country in 1749. The task, 
however, required a man of a different stamp. Charles 
Langlade, a young French trader at Michilimackinac, 
who had already acquired an ascendency over the Ottawa 
and Ojibwa tribes of the northern portages, was now 

82 



THE ENGLISH IN TEE OHIO COUNTRY 

ready to start on that long and brilliant career of petty 
warfare that makes his name and fame a part of the 
history of the Northwest. Early in the June of 1752, 
Celoron from the block-house bastion of Fort Pontchar- 
train beheld far up the placid river a fleet of swift dart- 
ing canoes, hurrying through the shallow passage be- 
tween the wooded island and the mainland. As the 
flotilla approached the little town the prows of the 
canoes were forced up on the sands at the foot of the 
palisades, and a crowd of a hundred and fifty warriors 
from Michilimackinac tumbled from the boats and went 
howling through the narrow streets of the little town. 
At their head was Charles Langlade, more savage than 
any Indian in the crowd. What Celoron and his French- 
men dared not undertake, that Langlade and his fol- 
lowers speedily accomplished. Crossing the corner of 
Lake Erie, the fleet ascended the Miami of the Lake, 
and on the 21st of June suddenly attacked the meagre 
fort at Piqua. Eight English traders and a few Indians 
were in the town. The surprise was complete. After a 
short fight fourteen Miamis and one trader were killed. 
The chief, known as Old Britain, was boiled and eaten ; 
the trading-house w T as plundered, and five traders were 
captured and carried to Governor Duquesne, who rec- 
ommended for Langlade a pension suited to the hus- 
band of a squaw!' 

1 Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe (Boston, 1898), vol. i., p. 89. 
See also Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, vol. iv., 
p. 599. 

The statement that on this occasion the Ottawas were led hy 
Charles de Langlade is made on the authority of Parkman (Mont- 
calm and Wolfe, vol. i., p. 89). Tasse in his elaborate sketch of 
Langlade makes no reference to the episode. The Pennsylvania 
records also are silent as to the leader of the Indians ; and Parkman 
himself repeatedly speaks of Langlade as married to a squaw at 

83 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Meanwhile Duquesne was preparing to cut off the 
English from the Ohio country. Early in the spring 
of 1753 a mixed force of king's troops, Canadians, and 
Indians, numbering not far from fifteen hundred per- 
sons, set out from Montreal, and in due time reached 
that most excellent harbor on Lake Erie then called 
Presqu' Isle, now known as Erie. There they built a 
post. Then, advancing, they built another on Le Bceuf 
creek, and still a third at Venango on the Alleghanj^. 
Sickness in the ranks and incompetency among the 
leaders made them pause ; but there the gauntlet was 
thrown down. 

Reports of the French advance having reached Govern- 
or Dinwiddie, he conceived it to be his duty to defend 
the Virginia frontiers against the invaders ; and he repre- 
sented to New York, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina 
the peril of the situation. The northern colonies held 
back. Governor Dinwiddie, who had become a member 
of the Ohio Company, was not slow to see that the plans 
of the corporation would come to nothing if once the 
French were allowed to reach the Ohio. He therefore 
resolved to send a messenger to ascertain the numbers 

Green Bay. This is inaccurate. Langlade's eldest child was the 
son of an Indian woman ; but she was never his wife. Langlade's 
father married an Indian woman, the daughter of an Ottawa chief ; 
but she was hardly to be called a squaw, for at the time of her 
marriage to Augustin de Langlade she was the widow of a French 
fur-trader, and the mother of his seven children, all of whom proved 
to be very respectable people. Charles de Langlade married on 
August 12, 1754, Charlotte Bourassa, the daughter of a French trader 
of wealth and position, and it was some time after their marriage that 
they went to live at Green Bay. Moreover, she was known to be 
mortally afraid of Indians, and on one occasion nearly suffocated her- 
self by hiding under a lumber-pile, on the approach of a band of 
Menominees. See Tasse's sketch of Charles de Langlade in Wisconsin 
Historical Reports, 1867. 

84 




GEORGE WASHINGTON 

(From a portrait painted in 1772 by C. W. Peale, now owned by General George 
Washington Custis Lee, of Lexington, Virginia.) 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

and force of the French, and to deliver to their com- 
manding officer the demand of Virginia, that all French 
troops be withdrawn from the country included within 
the chartered limits of that colony. The messenger 
selected for this delicate and arduous task was Major 
George "Washington, then a sedate youth of twenty-one, 
who had held the position of adjutant -general in the 
Virginia militia since he was nineteen. The selection 
was eminently fitting. Major Washington, as the exec- 
utor of the estate of his brother Lawrence, was now 
largely interested in the success of the Ohio Company, 
and he was not likely to repeat the failure of Dinwiddie's 
first commissioner, Captain William Trent, who went no 
nearer the French than Logstown. 

Armed with proper credentials, Washington started 
from Mount Vernon, in company with Jacob Vanbraam, 
a broken-down officer, who had taught the young major 
the art of fence and had instructed him generally in the 
duties of a soldier, and who was now to serve as his 
interpreter. Reaching the Monongahela, Washington 
secured the services of Christopher Gist, whose success 
in dealing with the Indians two years before had estab- 
lished his reputation with the company ; and the party 
was completed by four hired servitors, Barnaby Currin 
and John McQuire, a pair of Scotch-Irish traders, and 
Henry Stewart and William Jenkins. On reaching 
Frazier's they learned that the French commander, 
Marin, had died and that his troops had gone into win- 
ter-quarters. Twenty -five days out from Williamsburg 
the part} r , reinforced by Shingiss, King of the Dela- 
wares, reached Logstown, where they awaited the com- 
ing of the Half-king of the Six Nations, from whom 
they learned the whereabouts of the French. This chief 
had already been to the invaders with a demand that 

85 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

they withdraw from the Indians' country. " Fathers," 
he had said to the French. " both you and the English 
are white; we live in the country between: therefore 
the land belongs neither to one nor the other. But the 
Great Being above allowed it to be a place of residence 
for us ; so, fathers, I desire you to withdraw, as I have 
done our brothers the English; for I will keep you at 
arm's-length. I lay this down as a trial for both, to see 
which will have the greatest regard for it. and that side 
we will stand by. and make equal sharers with us. Our 
brothers, the English, have heard this, and I now come 
to tell it to you; for I am not afraid to discharge you 
off this land." 

To this vigorous speech the Frenchman had made con- 
temptuous answer that he was not afraid of dies or mos- 
quitoes, for such the Indians were; that he should go 
down the Ohio, build upon it, and tread under his feet 
all opposition. The land, he said, did not belong to the 
Indians ; for the French had taken possession of the 
Ohio while yet the present tribes were dwelling else- 
where. 

As between the French and the English, the Indians 
might well side with the former; because the French 
never contemplated the possession and cultivation of the 
lands, but merely the establishment of trading-stations. 
The French proposed to trade with the Indians : the Eng- 
lish colonists to dispossess them. Eventually the Eng- 
lish policy came to be but a continuation of the French, 
while the policy of the colonists was ever to acquire by 
purchase or by force, and to bring under cultivation the 
lauds that formed the hunting-grounds of the Indians. 
It may be admitted that the French policy was the more 
just to the Indian; but the Scotch-Irish, the Germans, 
Swiss, and other peoples of Europe, escaping from 
86 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

the intolerable conditions of the Old "World, could not be 
stopped in their rush to make homes for themselves 
in the fertile wildernesses of America. Moreover, there 
was much truth in the reply of the French commander 
to the half-king. No one of the tribes then in posses- 
sion of the Ohio country had long held the lands they 
then occupied ; the tribes were at war with one another ; 
and famine and disease added their work to the destruc- 
tion that ever stalked through the forests and over the 
prairies of the Northwest. To maintain the richest 
lands on earth as a game preserve for a few savages 
when hundreds of thousands of civilized beings were 
seeking homes and liberty might be theoretical justice, 
but certainly it was not consistent with the strongest 
impulses of human nature. 

On December 4th, Washington and his party, attended 
by the half-king, and two other chiefs commissioned to 
return the French belts, reached Yenango, an old Indian 
town near the junction of French Creek with the Alle- 
ghany. There, in a house of which the Englishman 
John Frazier had been dispossessed, dwelt Captain Jon- 
caire, who received the embassy with effusive courtesy. 
When wine had loosed the tongues of the French, they 
swore they meant to take possession of the Ohio, which 
they claimed by virtue of " a discovery made by one La 
Salle, sixty years ago." They knew the English could 
raise double the number of men the French could ; but 
they counted (and with good reason) on the dilatoriness 
of their enemies to prevent the success of any English 
undertaking. In Joncaire Washington was called on to 
deal with an adept. The son of a French officer and a 
Seneca squaw, he had all the advantages that come from 
being able to address the savages in their own tongue. 
He had acted as scout for Celeron's expedition, braving 

87 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

many a danger from Indians favorable to the English ; 
and it was due to his intrigues that the Iroquois were 
shaken in their allegiance to the British. He now en- 
deavored to win over Washington's red companions, but 
in this he was unsuccessful ; and after many delays 
the embassy reached Le Bceuf, where Washington pre- 
sented his letters to the commander, Legardeur de St. 
Pierre, " an elderly gentleman with much the air of a 
soldier." 

To the qualities of a soldier St. Pierre added the ac- 
complishments of a diplomat. First a translation of 
Washington's letters was made and duly corrected ; then 
three days were spent in preparing an answer to the 
effect that the communication of his honor, the Governor 
of Virginia, had been received and respectfully referred 
to the Marquis Duquesne, at Quebec, pending whose 
reply he, St. Pierre, would continue to execute his orders 
by expelling all Englishmen whom he found within the 
domains of his most Christian Majesty. While this 
reply was in preparation the French were using every 
means to detach the Indian chiefs from the English in- 
terest; but here the youthful envoy was more than a 
match for his elderly rivals. On the 16th of December, 
Washington turned his face homeward; and after many 
perils, including a narrow escape from the bullet of a 
treacherous Indian, he and Gist returned to Virginia. 

Washington's journal of his expedition to the Ohio, 
being sent to the Lords of Trade, and by them pub- 
lished in England, aroused the nation to a sense of the 
peril in which English territory was placed by the ad- 
vance of the French. The immediate result was an 
order from the Lords of Trade addressed to the gov- 
ernors of the colonies, commanding them to meet and 
consult as to steps for united action against the en- 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

croachments of the French, and to renew the covenant 
with the Six Nations. 

Governor Dinwiddie, also, set about putting Virginia 
on a w.ar footing. The military establishment was in- 
creased to six companies under the command of Colonel 
Joshua Fry, with Washington as lieutenant -colonel; 
and to stimulate enlistments the governor made a grant 
^of two hundred thousand acres of land on the Ohio, to 
be divided among the officers and soldiers engaged in 
the expedition. While Washington was recruiting his 
force at Alexandria, Captain Trent had raised a com- 
pany of traders and woodsmen, and had marched to the 
forks of the Ohio, where they began to build a fort on 
the site of the present city of Pittsburg. Washington 
reached Wills Creek on April 20, 1754, and five days 
later Captain Trent's ensign, Mr. Ward, arrived from 
the Ohio with the disagreeable news that on the 17th 
M. Contrecceur, with a thousand men, had appeared be- 
fore the half-finished fort and demanded its surrender. 
Captain Trent was at home, and Ensign Ward, taking 
counsel with Washington's Indian friend the half-king, 
made terms with Contrecoeur and withdrew. With this 
seizure of the Ohio Company's post by a French armed 
force began the French and Indian War, which raged 
for nine years and reached more than half-way round 
the globe. 

The news of this reverse Washington immediately 
communicated to Governor Hamilton of Pennsylvania, 
and to the Governor of Maryland, as well as to Governor 
Dinwiddie. The latter already had sought the aid of 
New York and South Carolina. In New York and 
Pennsylvania the assemblies were inclined to the opin- 
ion that perhaps France had the best claims to the Ohio. 
In the latter colony the proprietors absolutely refused 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

to allow their own lands to be taxed for purposes of de- 
fence; and in the other colonies either the dano-er seemed 
remote, or questions of prerogative between the elective 
assemblies and the royal governors prevented action. 

All unwittingly England now gave the colonies a use- 
ful lesson in self-government. In their natural desire to 
throw on the colonial treasuries the burden of defending 
the frontiers against the encroachments of the French, 
the Lords of Trade summoned the various governments 
to send delegates to an assembly to be convened at Al- 
bany in the June of 1754 for the purpose of enlisting 
the assistance of the Indians and concerting 1 measures 
for common defence. Albany was selected for the meet- 
ing-place because of its proximity to the lands of the 
Six Nations, always friendly to the English. Indeed, at 
this time England was disposed to base her title to the 
Ohio regions not on the voyage of John Howard, who, 
in 1742, had floated down the Ohio in a buffalo -skin 
canoe, only to be captured by the French on the Missis- 
sippi ; nor on the treaty made by the Pennsylvania in- 
terpreter, Conrad Weiser, at Logstown, in 174S ; nor yet 
on the prior Lancaster treaty of 1744, recognizing the 
right of the king to all lands within the colony of Vir- 
ginia. A much wider, although at the same time a 
much more indefinite, basis was found in the treaty of 
Albany, in 16S4, when the Six Nations placed all their 
lands under the protection of England. This treaty was 
taken to cover the lands conquered by the Six Nations 
between the Alleghanies and the Great Lakes ; and on 
it New York afterwards, as we shall see. claimed the 
Ohio country in opposition to the claims of Virginia and 
Connecticut. 

Although the Albany convention failed to accomplish 
the objects for which it was called, it introduced two 

90 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

men who were destined to have a large share in the his- 
tory of the western country. The first of these was 
Colonel William Johnson (afterwards known as Sir Will- 
iam Johnson), whose influence over the Six Nations, 
acquired by years of honest dealing, familiarity with 
Indian life and manners, and absolute steadfastness of 
purpose, exceeded that of any other person who ever 
had trade relations with that most powerful of all Ind- 
ian confederacies. It is a significant fact that the 
convention intrusted to Benjamin Franklin the task of 
expressing its thanks to Colonel Johnson for his compre- 
hensive plan for dealing with the Six Nations, and for 
defeating the plans of the French in their encroach- 
ments ; and it is more than probable that then and after- 
wards Franklin obtained from Colonel Johnson many of 
the facts and ideas that he afterwards used to such good 
purpose in presenting the advantages to be derived from 
holding the Ohio region. 

Franklin's own contribution to the occasion, however, 
was nothing less than a well-worked-out plan for a def- 
inite union of the colonies under a governor to be ap- 
pointed by the crown— a plan that was adopted by the 
convention only to be rejected by both the colonies and 
the crown ; by the colonies because it smacked too much 
of prerogative, and by the ministry because there was in 
it too much of democracy! There is good reason to 
believe that had a different fate attended this scheme 
the war of the Revolution would have been averted, at 
least for a time. 1 

Eeturning to Philadelphia, Franklin soon after pre- 
pared for Governor Pownall that almost prophetic paper 
in which he argues that England should take steps to 

> Sparks's Franklin, vol. iii. Sparks gives the Franklin plan of 
union together with his paper on the Ohio country. 

91 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

plant colonies in " the great country back of the Ap- 
palachian Mountains, on both sides of the Ohio, and 
between that river and the lakes," a region " now well 
known, both to the English and French, to be one of 
the finest in North America, for the extreme richness 
and fertility of the land; healthy temperature of the 
air, the mildness of the climate ; the plenty of hunt- 
ing and fishing and fowling ; the facility of trade with 
the Indians; and the vast convenience of inland naviga- 
tion or water carriage by the lakes and great rivers, 
many hundreds of leagues around." His plan included 
a strong fort at Niagara, with armed vessels on the 
lakes, and smaller forts on Lake Erie. A second colony 
was to have its seat on the Scioto, " the finest spot of its 
bigness in all North America," with the advantage of 
" sea-coal in plenty (even above ground in two places) 
for fuel, when the woods shall be destroyed." 

Events now hurried England into making a national 
rather than a colonial issue of the advance of the French 
into the territories claimed bjr the British. In May, 
1754, Washington in command of the advance force 
raised by Virginia, and aided by the half -king, fell 
upon a French detachment, and in a quarter-hour action 
killed the commander, M. de Jumonville, and nine others, 
taking twenty- one prisoners. On July 3d, however. 
Washington was attacked at his half-built Fort Neces- 
sity, and was compelled to withdraw, after a spirited 
contest of nine hours. Evidently the time had come for 
England to assert her claims to the Northwest. 

On the 20th of February, 1755, amid the alternate 
heats and chills of a Virginia winter, General Edward 
Braddock appeared on the Potomac as the commander- 
in-chief of His Majesty's forces in America; and in due 
time quartered five companies of his little army at Alex- 

92 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

andria, disposing the other fifteen companies at the pre- 
tentious town of Fredericksburg, at Bladensburg, then a 
considerable tobacco port, and at five or six other strag- 
gling villages in the neighborhood. Meantime the gen- 
eral quartered himself upon Governor Dinwiddie at the 
brick palace in Williamsburg, whence he sent out his 
summons for the leading men of America to meet him 
in council at Alexandria, whither he shortly repaired. 
Arrogant yet convivial, haughty but condescending, 
Braddock soon brought into subjection the discordant 
forces with which he was called upon to deal. He had 
brought with him from England two regiments of in- 
fantry, each five hundred strong, and these he proposed 
to supplement with an equal number of provincials. 
Never before had America seen so brave an array. 
Braddock, himself the son of a major-general, had been 
trained to arms in the Coldstream Guards, a regiment un- 
surpassed for valor, the very flower of the British army. 
In this model regiment he had won promotion by gal- 
lantry on the field of battle ; and his selection as com- 
mander of the American expedition was made by no less 
a personage than the Duke of Cumberland, who took an 
intense interest in all that related to the campaign, and 
who had repeatedly admired Braddock's coolness and 
intrepidity when under fire. 1 

Washington, in no mood to be humiliated by accept- 
ing a command in which he as a provincial would be 
subordinate to the lowest subaltern holding a king's 
commission, viewed from a distance the preparations for 
an expedition in which he burned to share. The astute 
Braddock avoided the difficulty by making the lover of 
the whistling-bullet 2 a member of his military family; 

1 Lowdermilk's Cumberland, p. 97. 

2 Horace Walpole, in his Memoirs, makes merry over a quotation in 

93 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

and thus he secured the devoted services of the bravest 

and shrewdest fighter in all America, and this, too, with- 
out taking a jot or tittle out of the king's order of prece- 
dence. 

From his stone castle on the Mohawk came Colonel 
William Johnson, to be placed in charge of Indian affairs, 
as a stepping-stone to the baronetcy as dear to his van- 
ity as was a silver medal to a savage. To Johnson was 
assigned the task of leading a force against Crown Point. 
From slow-going, peace-loving Philadelphia rode Benja- 
min Franklin, the shrewd postmaster-general of the colo- 
nies, then in his forty-ninth year. At his side trotted 
two royal governors: Delancy, of New York, and the 
urbane Shirley, of Massachusetts, who was to lead the 
attack on Niagara and Fort Frontenac. To Franklin it 
was given to wring from the close-fisted farmers of Penn- 
sylvania the means of transportation and the supplies 
necessary for the quartermaster's and commissary's de- 
partments; and with a zeal quite contrary to military 
knowledge he loaded the officers with comforts and lux- 
uries that did much to demoralize the expedition. 

To the admiring group gathered about the blazing 
fire in the Alexandria mansion that still bears his name, 
Braddock told how he would capture Fort Duquesne 
and then march on Fort Niagara, driving the French 
back within their proper territory on the St. Lawrence. 
The astute Franklin flattered while yet he suggested 



some Utter of Washington's in which the young soldier confesses that 
he loves to hear the bullets whistle. "Washington would not deny that 
he wrote some such thing ; but excused himself by saying that, if he 
did, it was when he was young. It is difficult to realize thai Wash- 
ington ever was young in the seuse of saying or doing an unpremedi- 
tated thing. The incident therefore is valuable in that it tends to 
humanize his character. 

U 




GENERAL EDWAKD JJItADDOCK 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

ambuscades ; but was silenced, if not convinced, by the 
lofty reply that the king's regular and disciplined troops 
were invincible, even in tangled forest and foe-lined de- 
file. With stately balls and convivial suppers the time 
of preparation was whiled away. Delay after delay en- 
sued. The Virginians were both poor and hard to move, 
and the resources of the country were meagre be}^ond 
the belief of a European commander. Throughout the 
languid spring the little army watched each westering 
sun sink behind those low hills and broad stretches of 
river and plain, where in less than half a century was to 
be built as the capital of a new nation a city to be named 
after the energetic youth who was then and there taking 
those lessons in the art of war that were soon to enable 
him to cope with the highly trained armies of the old 
world. 

Amid the fierce heats of June and early July, Brad- 
dock's army dragged its slow length towards the forks 
of the Ohio. The Delaware Indians, sp}nng upon the 
flanks of the English forces, saw that the advance 
was made in close order, and quickly decided to sur- 
round the army, take trees, and shoot down the soldiers 
like pigeons. 1 On July 9, 1755, James Smith, a captive 
at Fort Duquesne, while watching the preparations for 
the encounter, saw the Indians swarm about the ammu- 
nition barrels before the gates, in their haste to provide 
themselves with powder, bullets, and flints. Their wants 



1 Colonel James Smith's Account of Remarkable Occurrences, 1755-9 
(Philadelphia, 1834), p. 18. Parkman speaks of the exceediug value 
of this work. Smith, a Pennsylvania!!, was captured just before the 
Braddock defeat ; he was made to run the gantlet, and afterwards 
was adopted in the place of a warrior. For several years lie lived the 
life of an Indian ; and his experiences of life among the savages are in 
the highest degree interesting and valuable. 

95 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

supplied, they marched off " in rank entire," accom- 
panied by the French Canadians and some regulars, 
in all about four hundred 1 — a force so small that Smith 
was in high hopes that he would see them fleeing back 
before the British troops, and so put an end to his cap- 
tivity. The Canadians and Lake Indians, who had been 
summoned by Yaudreuil, were under the command of 
Cadet Charles de Langlade, whose influence over the 
fierce savages of the north the governor counted upon 
to insure a repetition of his former brilliant exploits. 
It was nine o'clock when the motley crowd of French, 
Canadians, 2 and Indians, under the command of De 
Beaujeu, set out from the fort ; it was half-past twelve 
when they came upon the English as the latter were 
enjoying their mid-day meal, on the south bank of the 
Monongahela. Unnoticed by the English, each savage 
and Canadian selected a tree, and prepared for the fray. 
Seeing the advantage of immediate attack, before the 
English should take up their arms, Langlade urged De 
Beaujeu to begin the fight. The Frenchman, made timid 
by the number of his opponents, refused. Then Lan- 
glade called to council the chiefs of the savages, and had 
them insist upon an order to begin. Again De Beaujeu 
refused. Thereupon Langlade made a second appeal, 
and this time won a reluctant consent. Then from the 
silent forest there broke upon the astonished English a 
noise of yelling savages and of whirring bullets like the 

1 Tasse puts the number at two hundred and fifty French and six 
hundred Indians. "Memoir of Charles de Langlade," Wisconsin His- 
torical Society Reports, 1876, p. 130. 

5 Among the Canadians were Langlade's brother-in-law, Souligney, 
his nephew, Gautier de Vierville ; Pierre Queret, La Fortune, Aniable 
de Gere, Philip de Rocheblave, and Louis Hamelin. Beaujeu was 
killed in the encounter. 

96 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

breaking loose of pandemonium. The Virginians died 
while fighting; but the regulars ran like sheep pursued 
by dogs, nor could their gallant officers rally them. 
Happily for his fame, Braddock himself found a brave 
death amid disgraceful defeat ; and history is kind to 
his memory, even while reprobating his fatal mistake of 
over-confidence. Braddock' s disgrace was the beginning 
of Washington's fame. "I luckily," writes the young 
soldier to his mother, " escaped without a wound, though 
I had four bullets through my coat and two horses shot 
under me." Not only was his personal bravery con- 
spicuous, but the Virginian method of fighting from be- 
hind trees proved beyond a doubt that when properly 
led the provincial was more than a match for the trained 
European soldier. A commander and the hope of suc- 
cess in any conflict that might come between the Old 
World and the New were born that July day in the 
slaughter-pen between the ravines of the Great Mead- 
ows. 

The defeat of Braddock brought down upon the de- 
fenceless settlers the stealthy raids of the relentless sav- 
ages. With fire and scalping -knife the frontier was 
rolled back towards the Atlantic, and throughout the 
Indian towns on the Ohio were distributed the captive 
wives and children of the murdered backwoodsmen. 
Meantime, in Pennsylvania the Assembly wrangled with 
the governor over questions of taxation ; New York 
prudently regarded the matter as one too remote for 
her concern ; and Virginia alone seemed willing to put 
forth what strength she had to protect her borders and 
retrieve the disgrace of the late defeat. For two years 
Washington was charged with the wearying and dis- 
heartening work of protecting the frontiers with a poor- 
ly equipped, poorly organized, and ill-supported militia. 
g 97 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Thankless as the task then was, those trying and per- 
plexing months were his schooling for like vexations on 
a larger scale during the eight long years of the Invo- 
lution. The insubordination on the part of the troops, 
ami the bickerings in the assemblies, which he learned 
to bear with patience in 1756 and 1757, were the same 
problems he was called upon to face twenty years later 
when he came to lead the armies of the united colonies. 1 
The expeditions of Johnson and Shirley were scarcely 
more fortunate than was that of Braddock. On Sep- 
tember 8, two months after the massacre at Great 
Meadows, the New York and New England militia, 
under Colonel Ephraim Williams, 2 were trapped at 
Lake George, and the Braddock tragedy was repeated ; 
but the rout of the morning was turned into victory 
later in the day, by reason largely of Johnson's disposi- 
tion of the reserves and the coolness of Lyman's Con- 
necticut regiment. There again the superiority of the 
backwoods manner of fighting was made apparent ; for 
no sooner did Dieskau's white -coated French regulars 
attempt an orderly attack on the provincials than those 
nimble fighters mowed down the regular formations in 
the same manner that Braddock's British force was an- 
nihilated; and their brave German commander died as 
gallant a death as did Braddock. For his part in the 
fray Johnson was made a baronet, and received five 
thousand pounds; but dissensions among the provin- 

1 Washington's letters, given in the second volume of Sparks, show 
how perplexing was his work during these years. 

2 Colonel Williams, a few days before his death at Bloody Pond, had 
made a will under which Williams College was founded ; and thus the 
memory of a brave and modest soldier has been perpetuated iu an in- 
stitution ever noted for a modesty in aim and a thoroughness in exe- 
cution unsurpassed among the colleges of the country. 

98 




THE BURIAL OF BKADDOCK 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

oials and Lukewarmness among the Indians brought the 
expedition to a sudden end. Governor Shirley, whom 
the death of Braddock had made commander-in-chief, 
marched a small army to Oswego; but dared not at- 
tempt to capture Niagara lest the French from Fort 
Frontenao should take Oswego, and could not go against 
Fort Frontenao because he had no boats fitted to cross 
Lake Ontario. Consequently in October lie returned to 
Albany. Thus ended for the British the disastrous year 
of L755. 1 

Desperate as was the situation for English power in 
America, in Europe matters were still worse. France 
had met England on the "Weser, and the Duke of Cum- 
berland lived to bear the disgrace from which his pro- 
tege Braddock was sheltered by an unknown grave. By 
the Convention of Closter Seven a, brave army of fifteen 
thousand Englishmen were sent home disbanded and a 
rabble. Port Malum, the key to the Mediterranean, hung 
at the girdle of the Duke of Richelieu. England's ally, 
Frederick, was hemmed within the narrow borders of 
Saxony by the wolves gathered from the Seine to the 
Volga, all snarling to tear Prussia to pieces. Even on 
the sea the red cross of St. George drooped from the 
mast-head of Admiral Byng's fleeing flagship; while in 
remote India the British merchant saw his expulsion 
decreed by a French adventurer. In parliament corrup- 
tion walked hand in hand with incompetency. 

In that day of wrath and ashes of empire, William 
Pitt was whirled into power. Making political corrup- 
tion his slave, with Newcastle for overseer, Pitt infused 
his own vigor into both parliament and army. Into the 
military chest of Frederick he poured that stream of 

1 Parkman'a Montcalm and Wolfe, (Boston, 1898), vol. i., |> 889. 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

gold needed to enable the Prussian emperor to maintain 
the armies he led with such consummate skill as to 
make men call him Great. In India " the boy-soldier 
of Arcot," on June 23, 1757, by the victory of Plassey, 
laid the foundation of England's East-Indian Empire; 
and in November, 1759, Admiral Hawke, scorning the 
shoals and reefs of Quiberon Bay, ruined a French fleet 
ready to transport a French army gathered to invade 
England. 1 

It was in America particularly that Pitt determined 
lastingly to punish England's inveterate foe. From his 
cabinet the generals of his choice went forth to their 
work animated by a courage and a zeal such as they had 
never before known. Amherst and Boscawen opened 
'the campaign in 1758 with the reduction of Louisburg, 
reputed the strongest fortress in the New World ; Aber- 
crombie was repulsed at Ticonderoga, but the next year 
Amherst, the fortress builder, worked his slow but sure 
way from the Hudson to the St. Lawrence. The tale of 
Wolfe's daring victory and heroic death on the Plains 
of Abraham is still the favorite theme of historian and 
novelist. A success less brilliant, but not less impor- 
tant; a success scarcely less tragic in its ending, and 
almost as hardly earned, was the steady march of 
Forbes through the unbroken forests of Pennsylvania 
and over the Alleghanies to force the evacuation of Fort 
Duquesne. 

In the July of 1758, General John Forbes gathered 
his little army at Raystown, now Bedford, on the east- 
ern slope of the Alleghanies. There was Colonel Henry 
Bouquet, newly arrived from European battle-fields, to 
lead the Royal American regiment of Pennsylvania 

1 Green's Short History of the English People, 1 1451. 
100 




BLOCK-HOUSE OP FORT DUQUESNB 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

Germans; and George Washington with the Virginia 
backwoodsmen, who were ever ready to follow him into 
battle, no matter how reluctant they might afterwards 
be to submit to discipline; and twelve hundred of Mont- 
gomery's Highlanders, clad in the kilt that the Indian 
derided as a petticoat ; and provincials from Maryland 
and North Carolina — all determined to avenge the Brad- 
dock disgrace. 

Exhausted by illness, yet steadfast and determined, 
the persistent Scotch general played by turns the parts 
of commander, quartermaster, and commissary. His 
very delays were made to aid his plans, by detaching 
from the French their Indian allies; and at his command 
the governor of Pennsylvania negotiated with the Five 
Nations and their allies the treaty of Easton, with the 
result that a joint message of peace was sent to the sav- 
ages of the Ohio. The hazardous mission of Frederick 
Post, with these tidings of peace; the cruel slaughter of 
Major Grant's too precipitate advance; and the dispute 
between Washington and Bouquet as to whether Brad- 
dock's road should be used or a new way cut, are all 
incidents of the terrible November march of the reso- 
lute army. From his swaying litter the pain-tortured 
general directed the movements of his troops as they 
made their slow way down the bleak slopes of the moun- 
tains and on towards the mingling -place of the Alle- 
ghany and the Monongahela, only to lind a few harm- 
less Indians prowling amid the ruins of a demolished 
fort. Some to Venango in the north, some to Fort 
Chartres in the west, the enemy had dispersed. So with- 
out a blow fell Fort Duquesne, and with it fell the power 
of France on the upper Ohio. About the few remain- 
ing houses Forbes drew a line of palisades as a defence 
against the Indians, and this enclosure he named Pitts- 

' 101 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

burg, for the minister in whose servioe, before he had 
reached two score and ten years, he had worn out his 
Life. Leaving to General Stanwix, who oame a year 
later, the task of building Fort Pitt, Forbes was home 
bade to Philadelphia to die. 

It was almost eleven months after the successful 
Pennsylvania campaign that Quebec capitulated ; and it 
was not until September, L760, that Vaudreuil, hemmed 
in by Amherst ami Murray and Baviland, yielded up 
Montreal, and with it the dominion of the Northwest 
from the St. Lawrenoe to the Mississippi.' 

Far away from the scene o( hostilities the little col- 
ony at Detroit stolidly eontinued in its accustomed 
ways, regardless of coming changes. On November 29, 
L760,Major Robert Rogers drew up his two companies 
of rangers and his little detaohment o( Royal Americans, 
on a grassy plain under the guns o( Fort Pontchartrain, 
and there awaited with oomposure the reply of thv 
French commandant, M. Bellestre, to the Letter of the. 
Marquis Yaudreil, commanding the surrender of Detroit 
to the British. Robert Rogers, the Leader of the Eng- 
lish forces en this delieate mission, was the most famous 
Indian fighter o^ his day. Horn in the Scotch-Irish set- 
tlement of Londonderry, New Hampshire, he began his 
career as a scout in the Merrimae Valley when he was 

1 Parkman's Montcalm and Wbtfe treats in a masterly manner of the 
struggle between France ami England. Chapter X. of Green's Short 
History of the English People is devoted t' 1 Pitt's work. Macaulay's 
essay on Lord Chatham treats of this period in retrospect. Thacke- 
ray's Virginians, in spite of some small inaccuracies, gives the true 
historical atmosphere of the Braddock expedition. Among the recent 
successful attempts to deal with the fall of Quebec are Gilbert Par- 
ker- < Mighty, and The Span o' Life, by William McLennan 
and .1. N. Mellwiaith. In Two Soldiers and a Politician Clinton Koss 
shows how the long story of Quebec can be told in a few words 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

but nineteen years old, and at this time had been in the 
king's service fourteen years. Taller by three or four 
inches than the average of his fellow-townsmen whom 
he led, like them he wore a close-fitting jacket, a warm 
cap, coarse woollen small-clothes, leggings, and moccasins. 
A hatchet was thrust into his belt, a powder-horn hung 
at his side, a long, keen hunting-knife and a trusty mus- 
ket completed his armament ; and a blanket and a knap- 
sack stuffed with bread and raw salt pork, together with 
a flask of spirits, made up his outfit. lie could speak to 
the Indian or the Frenchman in a language they could 
understand ; he knew every sign of the forest, every 
wile of his foes, and repeatedly his bravery and coolness 
had brought him safely through the most critical situ- 
ations. He lifted a scalp with as little compunction as 
did any Indian, and counted it the most successful war- 
fare to creep into an Indian encampment by night, to set 
fire to the lodges, and to make his escape by the light 
of the flames, with the screams of the doomed savages 
rejoicing his ears. 1 

On his way to Detroit Rogers and his party had been 
stopped at a place near the present site of Cleveland, 
by an embassy from the Ottawa chief Pontiac, who 
claimed to be king and lord of the country." When 
French defeat seemed assured, the prudent Pontiac had 
gone with the other chiefs from the Detroit to the re- 
cently surrendered Fort Pitt 3 to learn how the Indians 
were likely to fare under British rule. With short- 
sighted braggadocio, assurance was given him by the 
British commandant that the rivers would run with 

1 Joseph B. Walker's sketch of Rogers, New Hampshire Historical 
and Genealogical Society Publications, 1885. 

'Journals of Major Robert Rogers, London, 1705. 
3 James Grant's statement, Gladwin MMS. 

103 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

ruin, that presents from the great king would be with- 
out limit, and that the markets would be the cheapest 
ever known. These and many other fair promises so 
reassured Pontiac that he spread the good news far and 
wide among the Indians, and when Rogers appeared 
the chief gave him a most hospitable welcome, and even 
offered to escort him on his journey. Rogers, who was 
himself a great braggart, confirmed all that had been 
said at Fort Pitt ; and night after night, as ranger and 
Indian sat by the camp-fire and smoked the pipe of 
peace, the former told his inquisitive red brother how 
the English maintained discipline in their forces and 
handled their armies to the best advantage in battle ; 
also how cloth was made, and iron forged, and what 
multitudes of white men lived in great cities over seas. 

Rogers in all his experience had never before met so 
noble a son of the forest, and he easily came to under- 
stand how great keenness of mind, matched by majesty 
of appearance, confirmed to Pontiac that ascendency over 
the various lake tribes which, by right, belonged to him 
as the chief of the eldest member of their confederacy. 
Moreover, the shrewd New Englander knew that with 
Pontiac and the Ottawas on his side, the French com- 
mandant must speedily yield. M. Bellestre, however, 
made his own surrender as humiliating for himself as 
possible. On hearing of the approach of the English he 
set on the flag-staff of the fort a wooden effigy of the 
British leader's head, on which a crow, supposed to 
represent M. Bellestre, was engaged in scratching at 
the brains of his foe. But Pontiac's Indians had made 
known to their friends at the fort the true condition of 
affairs, and when the French commandant found himself 
deserted by his Indian allies, he gave the reluctant order 
to lower the lilies of France, which for more than half 

104 



THE ENGLISH IN THE OHIO COUNTRY 

a, century had floated over Fort Pontchartrain. As the 
red cross of St. George snapped in the brisk November 
breeze, above the hoarse cheers of rangers and provin- 
cials, came the joyous yelps of the fickle savages, who 
pelted with jeers their former friends, whom they now 
took to be cowards. 

The entire Northwest had indeed passed into the con- 
trol of the British; but the inhabitants by no means 
changed their minds when they changed their flag. In 
thought, in customs, in speech, whatever of civilization 
there was in the country was French, and so remained 
for three-quarters of a century. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE PONTIAC WAR 

The conquest of Canada by the English brought 
about several readjustments within the newly acquired 
territory. The army headquarters were transferred from 
Quebec to New York, whence General Jeffrey Amherst 
exercised military control over the posts. Under him 
Colonel Bouquet at Fort Pitt ranked the commandant 
at Detroit; but the latter held a general control over 
the upper lake posts and reported directly to General 
Amherst. Indian affairs were in charge of Sir William 
Johnson, whose headquarters, at Johnson Hall in the 
present State of New York, swarmed with Indian re- 
tainers and dependants, as well as with his own half- 
breed children. Under Sir William was his deputy, 
George Croghan, who was constantly engaged in going 
from tribe to tribe in his efforts to keep the peace. 

Along the Atlantic coast an American population of 
English and Dutch descent peopled the country. Nom- 
inally colonists, these people formed practically a group 
of independent states, awaiting only the coming of 
events already foreshadowed to coalesce into a new na- 
tion. From this sturd} T civilization the Northwest was 
completely cut off by the Alleghanies, a barrier not to 
be crossed b}^ settlers until the close of the Revolution ; 
and for the lake region not until long after that date. 
As under the French, so under the English, the North- 

106 



. THE PONTIAC WAR 

west continued to be held by garrisons maintained in an 
Indian country for the protection of the fur trade. The 
difficulties of the situation arose from the fact that the 
Indians disputed the right of the French to dispose of 
the country to the English ; while on their part, the 
English, having no longer to fear the French power, 
took less and less pains to conciliate the Indians. 

Captain Donald Campbell, as he settled down for a 
long winter at Detroit in 1760, was not ill pleased with 
his situation. The fort was large and in good repair, 
with two bastions towards the river and a large, strong 
bastion towards the Isle au Cochon (Belle Isle) ; two 
six-pounders and three mortars made up the battery. 
Within the high palisades some seventy or eighty houses 
lined the narrow streets. The fertile country along 
both banks of the river was cut into narrow farms front- 
ing on the water and extending back into the endless 
forest. The Indians living in the vicinity of the fort, as 
well as the settlers, looked to the commandant for both 
justice ' and supplies. The soldiers were contented, a 
fact which the captain ascribed to the absence of rum ; 
and the Indians were seemingly friendly, although the 
supplies issued to them were meagre in extreme. The 
social life at Detroit especially pleased the gray-haired 
bachelor commandant. The women surpassed his ex- 
pectations ; and the men, although very independent, 
were ever ready for pleasure. The Sunday card-parties 



1 Gladwin MSS., p. 674. Warrant issued by Sir Jeffrey Amherst 
to Major Henry Gladwiri, for the trial and execution of the sentences 
in the case of two Panis (Pawnee) slaves for the murder of John Clap- 
ham. The original warrant was in my possession. The Gladwin 
MSS., now in possession of the Rev. Henry Gladwin Jebb.of Firbeck 
Hall, Rotherham, England, are given in the Michigan Pioneer and 
Historical Collections, vol. xxvii. 

107 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

at the commandant's quarters, attended by both sexes, 
gave to life at Detroit a zest not known at Fort Pitt ; 
and at a ball, given in honor of the king's birthday, the 
array of ladies was so fine as to call forth Captain 
Campbell's hearty commendations, in one of his numer- 
ous gossipy letters to Colonel Bouquet. 1 , Moreover, both 
the French and the Indians were as fond of the pleasure- 
loving captain as their fickle natures would allow. 

During the summer, however, emissaries from the 
Six Nations came to Detroit with large belts, for the 
purpose of stirring up a general warfare against the 
English. Matters became so serious that Sir Jeffrey 
Amherst thought best to send Sir William Johnson to 
make a treaty at Detroit, and to despatch Major Glad- 
win with three hundred light infantry to strengthen the 
western posts. On their arrival in September, Sir Will- 
iam stated his conviction that the conspiracy against 
the English was universal ; but this opinion was not 
shared by General Amherst. The latter thought the 
Indians incapable of doing serious harm, but ordered, 
by way of precaution, that they be kept short of powder. 

The visit of Sir William Johnson was the greatest so- 
cial event that the people of Detroit had ever known. 
Captain Campbell was in his element. On Sunday 
evening he gave a ball to which he invited twenty of 
the French maidens of the settlement. The dance be- 
gan at eight o'clock in the evening and lasted until five 
next morning. It was opened by Sir William and Made- 
moiselle Cuillerier, the daughter of the principal French 
trader ; and her black eyes made such a lasting im- 

1 The correspondence covering this period is to be found in the 
Bouquet Papers, printed, in so far as they relate to the Northwest, 
in the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, vol. xix. See also 
Canadian Archives for 1889, and Stone's Life of Sir William Johnson. 

108 



THE PONTIAC WAR 

pression on the gallant Indian agent that the exchange 
of compliments between them appears in the correspond- 
ence for several years, the last mention being found in 
a letter from James Sterling, who, on behalf of his wife, 
returns hearty thanks for Sir William's civilities to her 
four years previous. Before leaving Detroit, Sir William 
also gave a ball, and on this occasion the dancing con- 
tinued for eleven hours. There was also a round of 
dinners and calls, at which wines and cordials were 
served without stint ; presents were showered upon the 
Indians, and after the final council all the principal in- 
habitants dined with the diplomat of the forest. 

In all these festivities Major Gladwin had no part. 
Lying in a little house, within hearing of the lively fid- 
dle and the laughter of the dancers, the fever of the 
country racked his bones and made him long for his 
Derbyshire home. At evening Sir William w r ould visit 
him to talk over the events of the day and plan for the 
future ; and it was not until the middle of October that 
Gladwin was able to leave for Fort William Augustus 
on his way to England. 

In July, 1762, the Indians learned with satisfaction 
that England was at war with Spain, and soon the re- 
port spread far and wide that the French and Spanish 
were to retake Quebec and all Canada. Here at last 
was the chance for which the savages had been waiting. 
With the help of the French they could drive out the 
English, and once more receive solicitous attention from 
both nations. At this juncture Major Gladwin again 
appeared at Detroit, this time with orders to establish 
posts on Lake Superior and to exercise general super- 
vision over the northwestern establishments. Cap- 
tain Campbell, although now somewhat wearied by 
the sameness of garrison pleasures, remained as second 

109 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

in command ; and the favor in which he was held by 
both the French and the Indians was a decided help to 
the adroit and business-like Gladwin. For company 
the officers had Sir Robert Davers, an Englishman of 
education and adventurous disposition, who had been 
exploring the Lake Superior country ' 

As spring came and the February thaws and March 
rains loosened the ice bonds that for three long months 
had locked Detroit from the world, Gladwin at evening 
must often have stood on the platform within the pali- 
sade to look out on the tumultuous river, where the 
great ice cakes from Lake Ste. Claire, tumbling over 
each other like marine monsters at play, were hurrying 
down to the warmer waters of Lake Erie. By day the 
details of administration kept him busy. The French 
merchants within the fort grumbled at the increased 
taxes imposed for the support of a garrison much larger 
than their own king had maintained ; the outlying posts 
were continually sending for supplies ; General Amherst 
was cautioned against gifts of ammunition and rum to 
the Indians ; and the savages, having bartered their furs 
for liquor at Niagara, had no means of obtaining the 
necessaries of life from the traders at Detroit. Some 
of the French and Indians complained that Gladwin 
called them dogs, and drove them from his house; and 
the subsequent career of those persons who made the 
charges shows that the commandant was an excellent 
judge of human nature. 3 

1 All contemporary accounts agree in speaking of "Sir "Robert 
Davers ; but there was no such person in the baronetage of England. 
Robert Davers, an elder son of Sir Richard Davers, was living at this 
time, but died before coming into the title. The family has since 
become extinct. 

2 Gladwin MSS., p. 642. Pierre Barthe claimed that Gladwin's ill- 
treatment of the French and Indians brought on the war. 

110 




GENERAL HENRY GLADWTN 
(From a photograph of a painting by John Holland) 



THE PONTIAC WAR 

Confident of the power of England to hold all she had 
gained from France, Gladwin had no suspicions that the 
Indians would foolishly rush to their own destruction 
by an attack on the British posts. Living behind pali- 
sades, and surrounded by a cordon of discontented and 
intriguing French, Gladwin could have no accurate 
knowledge of the mischief that for months had been 
plotted by the Ottawa chief, Pontiac, who had estab- 
lished himself, with his wives, on the narrow Isle a la 
Peche, rising above the waters of Lake Ste. Claire and 
concealed from the view of the fort by the thickly 
wooded Isle au Cochon. There is no reason to believe 
that Pontiac had impressed himself upon Gladwin as 
being in any way distinguished above the other chiefs, 
and doubtless many of the reports— like those of Rogers 
— of the Ottawa's striking personality are too highly 
colored. The fact remains, however, that now, at the 
age of fifty, Pontiac was in the full vigor of his power 
over the surrounding tribes, and that, during his connec- 
tion with the whites, his keen intelligence had absorbed 
valuable military knowledge. According to his own 
account, he had saved the French at Detroit from mas- 
sacre in 1746, when the great chief Mickinac (the Turtle) 
came with his northern bands " to carry off the head of 
the French commander and eat his heart and drink his 
blood/' Doubtless, too, he had led the Ottawas at 
Little Meadows in 1T55, when Gladwin for the first time 
heard the Indian war-whoop. At a great council of April, 
1763, held on the banks of the River Ecorses, below 
Detroit, Pontiac had related to the superstitious Indians 
a dream wherein the Great Spirit sent his message that 
they were to cast aside the weapons, the manufactures, 
and the rum of the white men, and, with help from 
above, drive the dogs in red from every post in their 

ill 






THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLA(iS 

country. The superstitious Indians heard with awe the 
voice from on high, and left the council prepared to 
obey the summons. 1 

Detroit being the chief point of attack, Pontiac took 
upon himself the plan for surprising and massacring that 
garrison. On May 1st, forty Ottawas danced the calu- 
met dance before Gladwin's house. This visit was for 
the purpose of spying out the land. Four days later, M. 
Gouin, a substantial French settler, brought word that 
his wife, while visiting the Ottawa camp to buy venison, 
had seen the Indians riling off the ends of their gun- 
barrels, evidently preparing for some deed of treachery. 
On the evening of the (5th Gladwin received private in- 
formation that the next day had been set for the destruc- 
tion of his garrison. The exact source of this private 
information is still a matter of some doubt. Lieutenant 
McDougall, who doubtless knew the secret, gives no hint 
in his report. It is not impossible that Mademoiselle 
Cuillerier, whose father and brother unquestionably 
knew of the conspiracy, put Major Gladwin on his 
guard, and that James Sterling, who afterwards became 
her husband, was well rewarded by the British for the 
timely warning. 2 The reward which Sterling received, 

'For a full report of this conference, see Parkman's Conspiracy of 
Pontiac. Mr. Paikman has written the history of Pontiac's conspiracy. 
Those who come after him can but make such corrections in his story 
as new information requires. Thus lie was clearly wrong in spelling 
the name " Q-ladwyn "; and he was unfamiliar with Gladwin's ante- 
cedents. He wrote from Pontiac's standpoint : as I have attempted to 
write from Gladwin's. 

- Mr. C. M. Burton, who propounds this theory, relies on this pas- 
sage in a letter from Major Henry Basset to Haldimand, dated at 
Detroit, August 29. 1778, ten years after the siege : "I beg to recom- 
mend Mr. James Sterling, who is the first Mereht. at this place & a 
gentleman, of good character, during the late war. through a Lady, 
that he then courted, from wdiom he had the best information, was iu 

112 



THE PONTIAC WAR 

however, might well have been given because he became 
the leader of the French citizens when they at last deter- 
mined to support Gladwin. Carver, who visited Detroit 
five years after the events to be described, and who pub- 
lished three editions of his Travels through North Amer- 
ica while Gladwin was still living, relates without con- 
temporary contradiction, a story that General Lewis Cass 
accepted with little hesitation and that Parkman clings 
to in spite of the doubts thrown upon it by investigations 
he himself made subsequent to the first edition of his 
Conspiracy of Pontiac. 

The evening of May Tth, according to Carver, 1 an Ind- 
ian girl who had been employed by Major Gladwin to 
make him a pair of moccasins out of curious elk-skin, 
brought her work home. The Major was so pleased 
with the moccasins that, intending them as a present 
to a friend, he ordered her to take back the remainder 
of the skin to make a pair for him. Having been paid 
and dismissed, the woman loitered at the door. Glad- 
win was quick enough to see that something was amiss. 
Being urged to tell her trouble, she said, after much 
hesitation, that as he had always behaved with much 
goodness to her, she was unwilling to take away the 
remainder of the skin, because he put so great a value 
upon it and she should never be able to bring it back. 
His curiosity being now excited, he insisted that she 
disclose the secret that seemed to be struggling in her 
bosom for utterance. At last, on receiving a promise 
that the intelligence she was about to give him should 
not turn to her prejudice, and that if it appeared to be 

part the means to save this garrison." — Mich. P. and If. Ool., vol. xix., 
p. 811 

1 Carver is clearly wrong in his date. MaeDoualcl gives May 6th, 
Friday, as the day of the disclosure. 
h 113 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

beneficial she should be rewarded for it, she informed 
him that at the council to be held with the Indians the 
following day, Pontiac and his chiefs intended to murder 
him; and, after having massacred the garrison and in- 
habitants, to plunder the town. Gladwin then dismissed 
her with injunctions to secrecy and a promise of reward. 
A story at once so romantic and so widely accepted 
deserves tender treatment; but in the Parkman manu- 
scripts this same tale is found in the mouth of one of 
Rogers's soldiers, who, as Cass proves, could not have 
known the facts. The truth probably has been related 
by the author of the Pontiac Diary. This writer says 
that an Ottawa Indian called Mahigan, who had entered 
but reluctantly into the conspiracy, and who felt dis- 
pleased with the steps his people were taking, came on 
Friday night, without the knowledge of the other Ind- 
ians, to the gate of the fort and asked to be admitted 
to the presence of the commander, saying that he had 
something of importance to tell him. The gates having 
been opened, he was conducted to Captain Campbell, 
second in command, who sent for Gladwin. They 
wished to call in the interpreter, Labutte, but the Indian 
objected, saying that he could make himself understood 
in French. He unfolded the conspiracy of the Indians, 
and told how they would fall on the English next clay. 
Having obtained a pledge of secrecy, and having refused 
presents lest the Indians should discover his treachery 
and kill him, he left the fort secretly. The writer adds 
that Gladwin made a promise not to disclose the source 
of his information, and that he kept it. 1 

1 The Pontiac Diary, written in French, was found in the roof of a 
Canadian house that was being torn down. Three translations exist : 
one in manuscript is among the Parkman MSS. in the Library of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society ; another is to be found in School- 

114 



THE PONTIAC WAR 

The crisis had come in the life of the young com- 
mandant of His Majesty's forces at Detroit. Although 
he could not then have known the extent of the wide- 
spread conspiracy which Pontiac had planned, yet he 
did know that his steadfastness and his knowledge of 
Indian warfare were about to be put to the test. Glad- 
win was a soldier by choice and by training, and the 
seven years he had spent in England's service on the 
frontiers had not been without its hard lessons. In 1755 
he had landed on the banks of the Potomac as a lieuten- 
ant in the ill-fated Braddock expedition. He was one 
of that band of glittering officers whom the provincial 
soldier, George Washington, had envied as they congre- 
gated in the old Braddock House at Alexandria, whose 
now bare but stately staircase and broad halls seem still 
to be peopled by the ghosts of fair ladies and dashing 
soldier gallants of a century and a quarter ago. In the 
ambush of Little Meadows, Gladwin had learned from 
the brave yet cautious young Virginian that the military 
science of the old world was out of place in battling with 
the denizens of the American forests ; and in the cam- 
paigns against Ticonderoga and Niagara this new knowl- 
edge had stood him in good stead. Scarcely more than 
a year previous he had given a hostage to fortune by 

craft's second volume ; and the other in vol. viii. Michigan Pioneer 
Collections, The original has been lost through the carelessness of 
persons connected with the old Michigan Historical Society ; and the 
loss is a serious one. The authorship of this diary is not known def- 
initely. I believe, however, that it is a portior/of the voluminous 
records of Father de la Richardie, of the Jesuit mission at Sandwich ; 
and that the pages were torn from his books and secreted when the 
English were endeavoring to obtain evidence of the complicity of the 
French in the conspiracy. At least the style is his ; and the records 
for 1762 and 1763 are wanting in his manuscripts now in the posses- 
sion of Mr. Richard R. Elliott, of Detroit. 

115 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

leading to the altar of the little Wingerwort church in 
Derbyshire a beautiful girl of nineteen, from whose side 
military duties in America too quickly recalled him. 
As the prospective head of an old and honorable county 
family, yet with little besides his profession of arms to 
give him support and reputation, Henry Gladwin, at the 
age of thirty-three, must have realized that the peril 
which now faced the king's supremacy was for him the 
door to success or to failure in life, according as he 
should succeed or fail to hold the post of Detroit against 
the savages whose hostility and crafty treachery threat- 
ened it. And yet, perhaps the warning of danger to 
come might be without foundation, as so many other 
warnings had proved to be. Perhaps the prudent, if 
fickle, Indians were bent merely on extorting more pres- 
ents and a larger portion of rum. Perhaps the serene 
river was a pathway of peace and not of war; perhaps 
the stillness of the trackless forest was not destined to 
be broken by the warwhoop and the death-cry. Yet if 
it was to be war he would be found neither unprepared 
nor wanting- in the determination that marks the soldier. 
In either event, the morrow would tell the story. 

About ten o'clock the next morning, as Carver 1 re- 
lates, Pontiac and his chiefs arrived, and were conducted 
to the council chamber, where Gladwin and his principal 
officers awaited their coming. As the Indians passed on 
they could not help observing a greater number of troops 
than usual drawn upon the parade. Xo sooner had the 

1 Jonathan Carver was born in Connecticut, and when a youth en- 
tered the British army, reaching the rank of captain. He was the 
first to use the name Oregon, and his explorations towards the source 
of the Mississippi opened that region to the world. For details of his 
life see Dr. John Coakley's edition of Carver's Travels, published in 
London in 1781, the year after Carver's death. See also "Winsor's 
Westtcitrrf Movement for portrait and maps. 

116 




MKS. HENRY GLADWIN 

(From a paiutiiig attributed to Romuey) 



THE PONT I AC WAR 

Indians entered the council-chamber and seated them- 
selves on the skins prepared for thorn than Pontiac asked. 
the commandant why his young men, meaning the sol- 
diers, were thus drawn up, and parading the streets. 
"To keep them perfect in their exercise,'" was the an- 

Then Pontiac began to protest his friendship and good- 
will towards the English ; and when he came to deli 
the belt of wampum, which, according to the warning, 
was to be the signal for his chiefs to fire, "the governor 
and all his attendants drew their swords half-way from 
their scabbards; and the soldiers at the same instant 
made a clattering with their arms before the doors, 
which had been purposely left open. Even Pontiac 
trembled, and instead of giving the belt in the mariner 
proposed, delivered it according to the usual way. His 
stolid chiefs, who had expected the signal, continued 
quiet, awaiting the result." 

Gladwin, in his turn, made a speech. Instead of 
thanking Pontiac lor the professions of friendship just 
uttered, he accused him of being a traitor. He. said that 
the English, who knew everything, were convinced of 
Pontiac's treachery and villanous designs. Then, reach- 
ing down to the Indian chief seated nearest him, he drew 
aside his blanket, discovering the shortened firelock. 
This entirely disconcerted the Indians. Inasmuch as he 
had given his word at the time they desired an audience 
that their persons should be safe, Gladwin said he would 
hold his promise inviolable, though they so little deserved 
it. However, he advised them to make the best of their 
way out of the fort, lest his young men, on being ac- 
quainted with their treacherous purposes, should cut 
every one of them to pieces. Pontiac endeavored to con- 
tradict the accusation, and to make excuses for his sus- 

117 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

picions conduct; but Gladwin refused to listen, and the 
Indians sullenly left the fort. 

Late that afternoon six warriors returned, bringing 
with them an old squaw, saying that she had given false 
information. Gladwin declared that she had never given 
any kind of advice.' When they insisted that he name 
the author of what he had heard in regard to a plot, he 
simply replied that it was one of themselves, whose name 
he promised never to reveal. Whereupon, they went off 
and carried the old woman with them. When the} 7 ar- 
rival in camp, Pontiac seized the prisoner and gave her 
three strokes with a stick on the head, which laid her 
flat on the ground, and the whole nation assembled 
around her, and called, "Kill her! kill her!" 

The next day was Sunday, and late in the afternoon 
Pontiac and several of his chiefs paddled across the 
placid river to smoke the pipe of peace with the officers 
of the fort. Gladwin, suspicious of so much protestation, 
refused to go near them; but Captain Campbell, un- 
willing to lose a chance to pacify the Indians, smoked the 
peace-pipe with them outside the fort, and took back to 
Gladwin the message that next day all the nation would 
come to council, where everything would be settled to 
the satisfaction of the English, after which the Indians 
would immediately disperse, so as to remove all suspicion. 

At ten o'clock next morning the anxious watchers be- 
hind the palisades saw a fleet of canoes coming around 
the lower point of the long island, and as the swift-dart- 
ing boats, hurried by paddle and current, covered the 
three miles of water the soldiers counted fifty -six of 
these barks, each carrying seven or eight Indians. The 

1 Rogers's Journal Doubtless this is the origin of the romance of 
the Indian girl. 

118 



THE PONTIAC WAR 

bows of the canoes rested lightly on the sand of the 
sloping bank, and the warriors made their way to the 
fort only to find the gates fast barred against them. In- 
stead of the cordial welcome they expected, an inter- 
preter met them with the message that not above sixty 
chiefs might enter. Whereupon Pontiac, enraged at 
seeing the futility of all his stratagems, and yet con- 
fident of ultimate success, in his most peremptory man- 
ner bade the interpreter sa}' to Gladwin that if all the 
Indians had not free access to the fort, none of them 
would enter it. "Tell him," said the angry chief, "that 
he may stay in his fort, and that I will keep the coun- 
try."' Then Pontiac strode to his canoe, and paddled for 
the Ottawa village. His followers, knowing that the 
fight was on, ran like fiends to the house of an English- 
woman and her two sons, whom they tomahawked and 
scalped. Another party paddled swiftly to Isle au 
Cochon, where they first killed twenty -four of King 
George's bullocks, and then put to death an old English 
sergeant. Afterwards, the Canadians buried the muti- 
lated corpse ; but on returning to the spot, so tradition 
relates, they were surprised to see an arm protruding 
from the grave. Thrice the dirt was heaped above the 
body, and thrice the arm raised itself above the ground, 
until the mound was sprinkled with holy water; then 
the perturbed spirit left the body in peace, never since 
disturbed. Having put to death all the English outside 
the fort, the Indians sent to Gladwin a Frenchman to 
report both the killing of the woman and her children, 
and also the murder of Sir Robert Davers, Captain 
Robertson, and a boat's crew of six persons, 1 who had 
been sent to the St. Clair flats to discover a passage for 

1 See Clairmont's testimony, Gladwin M8S., p. 663. 
119 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

one of the schooners bound to Michilimackinac. This 
information removed all lingering doubts that the 
Indians were determined to wipe out the English at 
Detroit. 

On his return to the Ottawa village, Pontiac ordered 
the squaws to change the camp to the western bank, 
above the fort. As the night mists gathered upon the 
tireless river, dropping a curtain between the great chief 
and his enemies, Pontiac himself, hideous in war paint, 
leaped into the centre of the ring of braves, and flour- 
ishing his tomahawk, began to chant the record of his 
valorous deeds. One bj r one the listening braves, catch- 
ing the contagion from their mighty chief, were drawn 
into the ring, until at last every savage was wildly 
dancing the war -dance. There was no sleep for the 
garrison that night. Gladwin, as he paced the wide 
street that encircled the buildings of the fort just with- 
in the pickets, took counsel with himself as to how he 
might withstand his crafty enemies. Burning arrows, 
silent messengers of destruction, might easity set fire to 
the fourscore or more wooden buildings within the en- 
closure ; and the church, standing near the palisades, 
was particularly exposed, unless, indeed, the supersti- 
tious Indians should hearken to their only less super- 
stitious French allies, who had threatened the savages 
with the vengeance of the Great Spirit if they should 
attempt to destroy the house of God. The two six- 
pounders, the three-pounder, and the mortars composing 
the battery of the fort were of little avail against an 
enemy that fought singly and from behind trees or 
whatever protection the opportunities might afford ; but, 
on the other hand, an English head above the pickets 
or an English body at a port-hole was the sure lodgement 
for an Indian bullet. The garrison was made up of one 

120 




"another party paddled swiftly to the isle au cochons" 



THE PONT I AC WAR 

hundred and twenty-two soldiers and eight officers, to- 
gether with about forty fur-traders and their assistants. 
These traders would fight to save their lives, but were 
inclined to the French rather than to the English. Be- 
tween this little garrison and the thousand savages was 
a single row of palisades made by planting logs close 
together so that they would stand twenty -five feet 
above ground. Block-houses at the angles and at the 
gates afforded additional protection ; and, best of all, 
the brimming river, whose little waves lapped the sandy 
shore near the south line of palisades, gave an abundant 
water-supply. A schooner and a sloop, 1 both armed, 
might be relied on to keep open the line of communica- 
tion with Niagara, whence Major Walters would send 
supplies. Promotion would be the reward of success; 
the torture-stake the penalty of failure. 

The chill that comes before dawn was in the air when 
Gladwin joined the anxious watchers in the block-house. 
The placid river seemed a great mirror reflecting the 
brighter stars. Gradually the black outlines of low 
farm-houses and encircling woods melted into gray; and 
then beyond the wooded island a disk of molten gold, 
pushing itself higher and higher, made of the deep 
waters a broad pathway of shimmering light. On the 
low bluff far up the river, Gladwin's anxious eye discov- 
ered the lodges of Pontiac's Ottawas, who, under the 
cover of the night, had paddled around the head of the 
island and noiselessly established themselves above the 
line of French farm-houses. This meant a siege ; and as 
the commandant was still gazing at the preparations for 

1 These vessels were built in 1761 on an island in the Niagara. The 
schooner when loaded drew seven feet of water ; she earried six guns, 
and the sloop carried ten. The schooner was named The Gladwin, 
and survived until about 1778. She was lost for want of ballast. 

121 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

war, a pattering of bullets against the block - house an- 
nounced the beginning of hostilities. 

During the morning a party of Wyandottes, sum- 
moned b}^ Pontiac to a council, stopped at the fort on 
their way. Fortified by English rum, they went off to 
the meeting-place under promise to Gladwin that they 
would do all they could to appease the Ottawas and dis- 
suade them from further hostilities. Next came a num- 
ber of the French settlers, bringing with them chiefs of 
the Ottawas, Wyandottes, Chippewas, and Pottawato- 
mies, who told Gladwin that almost all the French had 
gathered at the house of the trader M. Cuillerier, 1 . where 
the Indians were to hold their council. They assured 
Gladwin that if he would allow Captain Campbell and 
another officer to go to the council, it would not be hard 
to persuade the Indians to make peace. At any rate, it 
could do no harm to try ; for both the French and the 
Indians promised to see that the popular old captain and 
his companion returned in safety that very night. Glad- 
win, having little hope of turning Pontiac from his pur- 
poses, was reluctant to intrust Captain Campbell to their 
hands ; but the captain, relying on the friendship that 
had existed between him and the savages, no less than on 
the promises of the French, urged to be allowed to go to 
the council. The deciding influence which brought Glad- 
win to consent was the absolute necessity of getting into 
the fort a supply of corn, flour, and bear's grease ; for 

1 The Cuillerier family disappeared through the marriage of John 
Cuillerier to Mary Trotier de Beaubien. Her children by her first 
marriage called themselves Cuillerier dit Beaubien, and finally the 
Cuillerier was dropped, leaving the still well-known name of Beaubien. 
Mary Beaubien married for her second husband Francois Picote de 
Belestre (or Bele*tre), which may account for Pontiac's choice of M. 
Cuillerier as commandant ad interim. See Burton's Cadillac's Vil- 
lage, p. 42. 

122 



THE PONTIAC WAR 

the garrison had in store not more than enough for three 
weeks. So, while Captain Campbell and Lieutenant 
McDougall went off with high hopes, the prudent com- 
mandant, under cover of the darkness, set about gather- 
ing provisions from the French settlers across the river. 
Scarcely had the embassy of peace crossed the cleared 
space about the fort than they were met by M. Gouin, 
who first urged and then begged them not to trust their 
lives in the keeping of the now excited Indians. The 
appeal was vain. Yet even while the party were making 
their way along the bank of the river, they were set 
upon by a crowd of Indians, at whose hands they would 
have fared ill indeed had not Pontiac himself come to 
the rescue. On reaching the appointed place of meeting, 
they found the largest room filled with French and Ind- 
ians. In the centre of the group sat M. Cuillerier, 
arrayed in a hat and coat adorned with gold lace. 1 He 
kept his seat when the two officers entered and remained 
covered during the conference. When bread was passed, 
he ate one piece to show the Indians, as he said, that it 
was not poisoned. Pontiac, addressing himself to M. 
Cuillerier, craftily said that he looked upon the French- 
man as his father come to life, and as the commandant 
at Detroit until the arrival of M. Beletre, the former 
French commandant. Then Pontiac, turning to the 
British officers, told them plainly that to secure peace, 
the English must leave the country under escort and 
without arms or baggage. Thereupon M. Cuillerier 
warmly shook Lieutenant McDougall's hand, saying, 
"My friend, this is my work; rejoice that I have obtained 
such good terms for you. I thought Pontiac would be 
much harder." Hoping against hope for the garrison, 

1 Gladwin M8S. Testimony of Mr. Rutherford, p. 638 et seq. 
123 



THE NORTHWEST tJNDEE THREE FLA (is 

but apprehensive of no present danger to himself and 
his brother officer, Captain Campbell made a short but 
earnest plea for peace. Then he and Lieutenant Mc- 
Dougall waited anxiously for the usual grunt of approval. 
The moments dragged, and still the Indians sat impassive. 
For the space of an hour there was unbroken silence. 
Then Captain Campbell, dejected by evident failure, 
arose to retrace his steps to the fort. "My father," 
said Pontiao, quietly, " will sleep to-night in the lodges 
of his red children." 

The unusual intelligence that had raised Pontiac above 
every other Indian chief, had led the English to rely on 
his sense of honor, a quality rare indeed among savages. 
"What civilized races call treachery is to the Indian legit- 
imate warfare. It never occurs to a savage to expose 
himself to harm in order to accomplish an end that he 
can attain safely by deception. In spite of all promises, 
therefore, the two Englishmen were sent under strong: 
guard to the house of M. Meloche. That they were not 
immediately put to death was due solel}*" to the fact 
that Gladwin held several Pottawatomie prisoners, and 
Pontiac shrewdly enough feared that if the comman- 
dant should retaliate on his hostages, that tribe would 
vanish into the forest, leaving him without the support 
he so much needed. 

Captain Campbell and Lieutenant McDougall trusted 
to the promises of the French more than to those of 
the Indians. It has been assumed that the French 
at Detroit were the victims of the Pontiac conspiracy 
only to a less degree than were the English. It is 
true that there were a few prudent French farmers 
who gave to Gladwin what assistance they could give 
without drawing down on themselves the enmity of the 
Indians ; but it was generally believed among the French 

124 



THE PONTIAC WAR 

that the English would soon be driven out of New- 
France, and that the French king would again be their 
monarch. For two centuries the warfare between French 
and English over the fur-trade had been as barbarous as 
war was in Europe during the same time ; human life 
on either side of the Atlantic was not considered worth 
a king's serious consideration ; and the soldier of that 
day in every nation was a freebooter. It is not sur- 
prising that the French traders and wood -rangers at 
Detroit should have seized upon Pontiac's war to de- 
spoil their ancient enemies and their conquerors of less 
than three years' standing. The only cause for surprise 
is that the French did not from the start openly make 
common cause with Pontiac. That they secretly gave 
aid and encouragement to the Indians was repeatedly 
charged by Gladwin. The convincing proof of his as- 
sertions is to be found in the official reports of inquiries 
he caused to be held at Detroit during the siege, reports 
which after more than a century and a quarter of ob- 
livion, have been found and made available by one of 
Gladwin's descendants. 1 The problem for Gladwin was 
to hold out at Detroit until both the French and Ind- 
ians could be convinced that the French Government 
would not assist them and that the peace with England 
was definite and lasting. 

The terms proposed to Captain Campbell were offered 
next day to Gladwin, and the French urged him to es- 
cape while he might; but the } 7 oung Englishman abso- 

1 Gladwin MBS., Jadoc's testimony, p. 656. It appears that the 
heads of the French families were unwilling to place their wives, 
children, and possessions in jeopardy; but were ready enough to sacri- 
fice the three hundred young men "who had neither parents, nor 
much property to lone." " The villany of the settlement in general, 
to write it, would fifi a volume." 

125 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

lutely refused to make any terms with savages. His 
soldiers caught his spirit, so that he was able to write 
confidently to General Amherst, that he would hold out 
until succor should come. The schooner Gladwin, which 
bore the despatch, eluded Pontiac's canoes ; and when the 
chief reported his failure to M. Cuillerier, the French- 
man jeered at him because five canoes withdrew at the 
death of a single Pottawatomie. 1 

Now began a long series of disasters to the English. 
One by one the results of Pontiac's plotting transpired. 
Everything seemed to be giving way before the exult- 
ing savages. On May 22d news came of the capture of 
Fort Sandusky. 3 At the inquiry Ensign Paully related 
that on May 16th his sentry called him to speak with 
some Indians at the gate. Finding several of his own 
Indians in the party, he allowed seven to enter the fort 
and gave them tobacco. Soon one of the seven raised 
his head as a signal, whereupon the two sitting next the 
officer seized and bound him and hurried him from the 
room. He passed his sentry dead in the gateway, and 
saw lying about the corpses of his little garrison. His 
sergeant was killed in the garden where he had been 
planting ; the merchants were dead and their stores were 
plundered. The Indians spared Paully and took him 
to their camp at Detroit, where he was adopted as the 
husband of a widowed squaw, from whose toils he finally 
escaped to his friends in the fort. 

On May 18th, Ensign Holmes, who commanded the 
garrison at Fort Miami, on the Maumee, was told by a 
Frenchman that Detroit had been attacked, whereupon 
the ensign called in his men and set them at work mak- 
ing cartridges. Three daj's later Holmes's Indian ser- 



1 Gladwin MSS., p. 641. ■ Ibid., p. 636. 

126 



THE PONTIAC WAR 

vant besought him to bleed one of her friends who lay ill 
in a cabin outside the stockade. On his errand of mercy 
he was shot dead. The terrified garrison of nine were 
only too glad to surrender at the command of two 
Frenchmen, Pontiac's messengers, who were on their 
way to the Illinois to get a commandant for Detroit. 1 
On May 25th, at Fort St. Joseph, seventeen Pottawat- 
omies came into Ensign Schlosser's room on the pre- 
tence of holding a council. A Frenchman who had 
heard that treachery was planned, rushed in to give the 
alarm, whereupon Ensign Schlosser was seized, ten of 
the garrison were killed, and the other three with the 
commandant were made prisoners. They were after- 
wards brought to Detroit and exchanged. 2 

On the 29th the long expected bateaux from Niagara 
were seen coming up the river. With joyful hearts the 
garrison looked forward to the end of their tedious siege. 
But as the boats came nearer, the English saw with dis- 
may that Indians were the masters of the craft. When 
the foremost bateaux came opposite the schooner, two 
soldiers in her made the motion to change rowing places. 
Quickly they seized the Indians and threw them over- 
board. One Indian carried his assailant with him and 
in the struggle both found death. Another soldier 
struck the remaining Indian over the head with an oar 
and killed him. Under the fire of sixty savages on the 
shore the three plucky Englishmen escaped to the vessel 
with their prize, which contained eight barrels of most 
acceptable pork and flour. Of the ten bateaux that had 
set out from Niagara under Lieutenant Cuyler, eight 
had been captured and the force had been completely 

1 Gladwin MSS., Testimony of James Beems, p. 637. The French- 
men were Godfroy and Chene. 
* Ibid., Testimony of Ensign Schlosser, p. 636. 

127 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

routed by an Indian surprise and night attack at the 
mouth of the Detroit. 1 • 

Following the capture of the bateaux came the dark- 
est days of the siege. Often during a whole day the 
Indians, drunken on the rum from the captured stores, 
did not fire a shot, but in their fiendish glee they gave 
notice of their presence by sending the scalped and 
mangled bodies of English captives to float past the 
palisades in sight of the sentries. 

To add to these tales of disaster came Father La Jau- 
nay, missionary at Michilimackinac, 2 to tell the bloodiest 
story of all. On June 2d, the Chippewas living near 
the fort assembled for their usual game of ball. They 
played from morning till noon, and Captain George 
Etherington and Lieutenant Leslie stood by to watch 
the sport. Suddenly the ball was struck over the pali- 
sades. A dozen Indians rushed through the gate to get 
it. Before the dazed sentry could recover, the captain 
and lieutenant were seized and hurried off ; the Indians 
within the fort had received from the squaws stationed 
there hatchets hidden under their blankets; in an in- 
stant Lieutenant Jamet, fifteen soldiers, and a trader 
named Tracy were put to death, five others were re- 
served for a like fate, and the remainder of the garrison 
were made prisoners. Had it not been for the powerful 

1 Bouquet Papers, Canadian Archives, 1889, p. 227. Cuyler him- 
self escaped to Presque Isle, Surgeon Cope and fifteen men were killed. 
On June 20th, as he was returning to Detroit from Niagara, Cuyler 
witnessed the destruction of Presque Isle, but being ten miles out in 
the lake could give no assistance. See Gladwin MSS., pp. 637, 638. 

2 In 1712, Father Marest built a church on the south side of the 
Straits of Mackinac near the present site of Mackinac City, and two 
years later Louvigny built a fort there. Thereafter the name Michili- 
mackinac, which had been applied to the region, was confined to the 
settlement and the island. 

128 



THE PONT I AC WAR 

influence of Charles Langlade 1 and his friends the Otta- 
was, all the English must have perished ; as it was, Cap- 
tain Etherington and Lieutenant Leslie, with fourteen 
men, were held until July 18th, and were then taken to 
Montreal by the Ottawas. 2 

On Sunday, the 26th of June, Pontiac, for mingled 
purposes of religion and business, paddled across the 
Detroit river to attend mass in the little French chapel. 
When the services were over, the chief selected three 
of the chairs in which the thrifty French had been car- 
ried to church, and making the owners his chairmen, 
he and his guard set off on a search for provisions. He 
imitated the credit certificates issued by Gladwin and 
gave in payment for cattle billets signed by his mark, 
the picture of a coon. The provisions were transported 
to Pontiac's camp near Parent's Creek, and in due time 
the billets were redeemed. The next day Pontiac sent 
another summons to surrender, saying that nine hun- 
dred Indians were on their way from Michilimackinac, 
and if Gladwin waited till those Indians arrived he 
would not be answerable for the consequences. Glad- 
win replied that until Captain Campbell and Lieutenant 

1 Gladwin M88. Etherington to Gladwin, p. 631. Mrs. Cather- 
wood's story, The White Islander, relates the experience of Alexander 
Henry, who was one of the survivors of the massacre. Henry's own 
published narrative forms the basis for the story and for Parkman's 
chapter. 

2 Etherington had warned the little garrison at La Bay (Green Bay); 
Lieutenant Gorrell and his men were brought as prisoners to Michili- 
mackinac, and were sent to Montreal with Etherington and Leslie. 
The garrison at Ouatanon (Lafayette), on the Wabash, was to have 
been massacred on June 1st; but the French persuaded the Indians to 
make prisoners of Lieutenant Jenkins and his men and to send them 
to the Illinois. See Gladwin MSB., Letters from Etherington and 
Jenkins to Gladwin, pp. 633, 639. Le Bceuf, Venango, Carlisle, and 
Bedford were cut off on June 18th. 

I 129 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

McDougall were returned, Pontiac might save himself 
the trouble of sending messages to the fort. To this the 
wily Pontiac made answer that he had too much regard 
for his distinguished captives to send them back; be- 
cause the kettle was on the fire for the entire garrison, 
and in case they were returned he should have to boil 
them with the rest. 

On the 30th of June, the Gladwin, returning from 
Niagara, ploughed her wa}^ up the white-capped river and 
landed a force of fifty men, together with provisions 
and some much needed ammunition. For two months 
Gladwin had guarded Detroit against surprise and had 
sustained a siege conducted by Pontiac in person, while 
fort after fort had fallen before the savages. As the Ind- 
ians returned from their successes elsewhere they were 
more and more eager for the overthrow of the one fort 
that hitherto had baffled all their efforts. In his ex- 
tremity Pontiac now turned on the French and threat- 
ened to force them to take up arms against the English. 
During the siege, however, copies of the definitive treaty 
between France and England had reached Detroit; and, 
on July 4th, Gladwin assembled the French, read to 
them the articles of peace, and sent a copy across the 
river to the priest. Thereupon forty Frenchmen, choos- 
ing James Sterling as their leader, took service under 
Gladwin. On this same day a party from the fort made 
a sortie for the purpose of bringing in some powder and 
lead from the house of M. Baby, who had taken refuge 
in the fort. Lieutenant Hay, an old Indian - fighter, 
commanded the force, and in his exultation over driving 
off an attacking party, he tore the scalp from the head 
of a wounded Indian and shook his trophy in the face of 
his enemies. It happened that the one of the savages 
killed was the son of a Chippewa chief; and as soon as 

130 



THE PONTIAC WAR 

the tribe heard of their disaster they went to Pontiac to 
reproach him for being the cause of their ills, saying 
that he was very brave in taking a loaf of bread or a 
beef from a Frenchman who made no resistance, but it 
was the Chippewas who had all the men killed and 
wounded every day. Therefore, they said, they in- 
tended to take from him what he had been saving. 
Lieutenant McDougall had already made his escape to 
the fort ; but they went to Meloche's house, where the 
brave old Captain Campbell was still confined. They 
stripped him, carried him to their camp, killed him, took 
out his heart and ate it, cut off his head, and divided his 
body into small pieces. Such was the end a brave sol- 
dier, esteemed, loved, and sincerely mourned in the army, 
from General Amherst and Colonel Bouquet down to 
the privates who served under him. 

At midnight on July 10th the sentries in the fort saw 
floating down the black river a great mass of fire. The 
flames, feeding on fagots and birch -bark, leaped high 
in the air, lighting up the forest-covered island in the 
background and bringing into high relief the white- 
washed cottages that lined the shore. Hurried by the 
swift current, a great fire-raft, built by the French 1 and 
Indians, made for the two vessels anchored in the 
stream ; but the alert crews had anticipated their dan- 
ger and were prepared for it. . The vessels were anchored 
by two cables, and as the flaming pile approached, they 
slipped one cable and easily swung out of the way of 
the enemy. 

The hot days succeeded one another all too slowly. 
On the 29th of July the guards heard firing down the 
river, and half an hour later the surprised sentries saw 

1 Gladwin MSS., p. 647. 
131 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

the broad surface of the river dotted with bateaux, the 
regular dip of whose oars was borne a long way on the 
still morning air. A detachment of two hundred and 
sixty men under the command of Captain Dalyell, one 
of General Amherst's aides-de-camp, had come to put 
an end to the siege. Captain Dalyell was an officer of 
undoubted bravery, and the tales of slaughter he had 
heard at Presque Isle and Sandusky on his way to De- 
troit made him anxious to crush Pontiac by one bold 
stroke. Gladwin, whom months of close acquaintance 
with the wary Indian chief had taught discretion, gave 
consent to Dalyell's plan of a night attack, only on the 
threat of the latter to leave Detroit unless such a blow 
should be struck. 1 The treacherous French, learning 
the details of the plan, immediately put Pontiac on his 
guard." In the earliest hours of the 31st of July, Dal- 
yell marched a force of two hundred and fifty men along 
the sandy bank of the swift -flowing river, passed the 
well -enclosed cottages of the French and on towards 
Parent's creek, a little stream that fell into the river 
about a mile and a half above the fort. 

The twent}r-five men in advance had just stepped on 
the rude bridge across the run, when from the ridges 



1 Gladwin and McDonald agree that the night attack was stren- 
uously opposed by the former. There is a tradition (Fred. Carlisle re- 
lates it as a fact, in his report to the Wayne County Historical Society 
for 1890) that Dalyell and Gladwin both sought the hand of Made- 
leine de Tonnancour, and that when she favored the aide-de-camp, 
Gladwin willingly sent him to his death. Inasmuch as Gladwin was 
happily married during the previous year, this story is simply another 
illustration of the fables that have gained currency in connection- with 
the Pontiac conspiracy. 

2 Bart, the gunsmith, went through the Ottawa village shouting 
" Down with your huts ! Down with your huts ! Send your squaws 
and children to the woods !"— Gladwin MSS., p. 646. 

132 




A DIGHT-INFANTUY SOLDIER OF THE PERIOD 



THE PONTIAC WAR 

that formed the farther side of the gully came a volley 
of musketry that hurled the little band in confusion 
back on the main body. In the pitchy darkness, cheered 
on by Daly ell's steady words of command, the British 
swept the ridges only to find themselves chasing those 
deadly will-o'-the-wisps, the flashes of an enemy's guns. 
To fall back was absolutely necessary ; but here again 
the soldiers were met by the rapid firing of the Indians 
who had occupied the houses and orchards between the 
English and the fort. Every charge of the soldiers only 
enveloped the pursuers in a maze of buildings, trees, and 
fences, while the Indians beat a nimble retreat, firing 
from behind any shelter they could find. From an open 
cellar the concealed savages poured a deadly fire into 
the British ranks ; but still Dalyell was undismayed. 
Where commands were of no effect, he beat the men 
with the flat of his sword. Captain Robert Rogers, 1 

1 After receiving the surrender of Detroit, Rogers had been with 
Colonel Grant in South Carolina, fighting the Cherokees. He now 
had twenty Rangers in his party. Two years before he had married 
the daughter of Rev. Arthur Brown, rector of St. John's Church, 
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and after leaving Detroit he received 
a grant of land in Rumford, now Concord, New Hampshire, where 
the Rogers House was still standing in 1885. He was in London in 
1765, and there published his Journals and his Concise Account of North 
America ; possibly, too, he was the author of Ponteach ; or the Savages 
of America ; a tragedy printed in 1766 by Rogers's publisher, J. Mil- 
Ian, of London. In 1766 General Gage sent Rogers to Michilimackinac, 
where he plotted to turn the post over to the French, out of revenge 
for the steps taken by government to curb his extravagance and stop 
his illicit trade. In 1770 he appeared again in London, was presented 
at court, had his accounts settled, but failed to obtain the baronetcy 
he demanded. He tried to obtain a command in the American army, 
but Washington would have nothing to do with him. On October 
21, 1776, as lieutenant-colonel of a British regiment, he was defeated 
by the Americans at Mamaroneck, New York. His wife secured a 
divorce by act of the New Hampshire Legislature, in 1778, and he 

133 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

trained in frontier warfare, burst open the door of a cot- 
tage filled with Indians, and with his Rangers put the 
ambushed savages to flight. Captain Gray fell mortally 
wounded in a charge. Dalyell himself, twice wounded, 
went to the succor of a helpless sergeant, when he too 
fell dead, and the Indians smeared their faces with his 
heart's blood. Major Rogers, who succeeded to the 
command,- took possession of the well-built Campau 
house, where his soldiers, fortified without by solid 
logs and bales of furs, and strengthened within by 
copious draughts from a keg of whiskey, held the en- 
emy at bay until communication could be had with 
the fort. Two bateaux armed with swivels soon came 
to the rescue of Rogers, who had been besieged by 
about two hundred Indians. The remainder of the 
force under Captain Grant beat an orderly retreat. Of 
the two hundred and Mty who went out, one hundred 
and fifty-nine were killed or wounded, while the Indian 
loss did not exceed twenty. 

This victory of Bloody Run, as Parent's Creek was 
ever afterwards called, restored the waning fortunes of 
Pontiac, and every day brought accessions to his forces. 
Yet never since the siege began was Major Gladwin 
more hopeful of ultimate success. So the heats of Au- 
gust passed with an occasional skirmish, and September 
began. The Indians, powerless against the palisades, 
again turned their attention to the vessels that kept 
open the food communication with the settlers across 
the river and made occasional trips to Fort Niagara for 
supplies and ammunition. From one of these latter 
voyages the schooner Gladwin was returning on the 

died in obscurity iii London, about 1800. Dr. F. B. Hough's edition 
of Rogers's Journals (Albany, 1883), and J. B. Walker's sketch, before 
adverted to, are the best authorities. 

134 



THE PONTIAC WAR 

night of September 4th, when, the wind failing, she 
anchored nine miles below the fort, having on board 
her commander, Horst, her mate, Jacobs, and a crew of 
ten men. Six Iroquois, supposed to be friendly to the 
English, had been landed that morning, and to their 
brethren was probably due the night attack made by a 
large force of Indians, whose light canoes dropped so 
silently down the dark river that a single cannon-shot 
and one volley of musketry were all the welcome that 
could be given them. Horst fell in the first onslaught, 
and Jacobs, seeing that all hope was gone, gave the 
command to blow up the vessel. At the word some 
Wyandottes, who knew the meaning of the command, 
gave warning to their companions, and all made a dash 
overboard, swimming for dear life to be clear of the 
dreaded destruction. Jacobs, no less astonished than 
gratified at the effect of his words, had no further 
trouble that night, and the next morning he sailed 
away to the fort. Six of the sailors escaped unhurt to 
wear the medals presented to them for bravery. 

From the beginning of the siege Pontiac 1 had relied 
on help from the French in the Illinois country, to whom 
he had sent an appeal for aid. " Since our father, Mr. 
Beletre, departed," he said, " the Indians had no news, 
nor did any letters come to the French, but the English 
alone received letters. The English say incessantly that 

1 There is evidence that LeDucSt. Corne Le Due and other French 
agitators spread abroad the report that the French were in the St. Law- 
rence ready to drive out the English, and that Pontiac, in common 
with the Indians and French traders, relied on these reports.— See 
Gladwin 3188., p. 652, testimony of John Seger. The Delawares and 
Shawanese also did their utmost to stir up strife. In fact, there was 
no Indian trouble in the Northwest for more than half a century in 
which the Shawanese were not the instigators. — See Gladwin MSS., 
pp. 644, 671. 

135 



THE NORTHWEST UNDKK THREE FLAGS 

since the French and Spaniards have been overthrown, 
they own all the country. When our father, Mr. Be- 
letre, was going off from hence, he told us, ' My children, 
the English to-day overthrow your father; as long as 
they have the upper hand ye will not have what ye 
stand in need of ; but this will not last.' We pray our 
father at the Illinois to take pity on us and say, ' These 
poor children are willing to raise me up.' Why do we 
that which we are doing to-day ? It is because we are 
unwilling that the English should possess these lands ; 
this is what causeth thy children to rise up and strike 
everywhere." 

This message was indorsed by the Chippewas and by 
the French inhabitants at Detroit, the latter complain- 
ing that they were obliged to submit to Indian exactions. 
M. Neyeon, the French commandant at Fort Chartres, 
in the Illinois country, acting under pressure from Gen- 
eral Amherst (who had learned from Gladwin how es- 
sential to Pontiac's success was the expected help from 
the French), replied to the appeal that " the great day 
had come at last wherein it had pleased the Master of 
Life to command the Great King of France and him of 
England to make peace between them, sorry to see the 
blood of men spilled so long." So these kings had or- 
dered all their chiefs and warriors to bury the hatchet. 
He promised that when this was done the Indians would 
see the road free, the lakes and rivers unstopped, and 
ammunition and merchandise would abound in their 
villages; their women and children would be cloaked; 
they would go to dances and festivals, not cumbered 
with heavy clothes, but with skirts, blankets, and rib- 
bons. " Forget then, my dear children," he commanded, 1 

1 Gladwin MSS., Letters from Peter Joseph Neyeou de Villiere, 
pp. 363, 364, 365. 

136 



THE PONT I AC WAR 

"all evil talks. Leave off from spilling the blood of 
your brethren, the English. Our hearts are now but 
one ; you cannot, at present, strike the one without 
having the other for an enemy also." 

This message had the desired effect. Dated on Sep- 
tember 27th, its contents so dashed Pontiac's hopes that 
on October 12th he sued most submissively for peace. 
Gladwin, being in need of flour, granted a truce, but 
made no promises, saying that General Amherst alone 
had power to grant pardon. To Amherst the comman- 
dant wrote that it would be good policy to leave matters 
open until the spring, when the Indians would be so 
reduced for want of powder there would be no danger 
that they would break out again, " provided some exam- 
ples are made of our good friends, the French, who set 
them on." Gladwin then adds, "No advantage can be 
gained by prosecuting the war, owing to the difficulty of 
catching them [the Indians]. Add to this the expense 
of such a war, which, if continued, the ruin of our entire 
peltry trade must follow, and the loss of a prodigious 
consumption of our merchandise. It will be the means 
of their retiring, which will reinforce other nations on 
the Mississippi, whom they will push against us, and 
make them our enemies forever. Consequently it will 
render it extremely difficult to pass that country, and 
especially as the French have promised to supply them 
with everything they want." 

Then follows the passage, 1 often quoted to show 
Gladwin's cynical brutality: "They have lost between 
eighty and ninety of their best warriors ; but if your 
Excellency still intends to punish them for their bar- 
barities, it may be easier done, without any expense to 

1 Gladwin MBS., p. 675. This letter is in Gladwin's own hand- 
writing, and is doubtless his original draft. 

137 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

the crown, by permitting a free sale of rum, which will 
destroy them more effectually than fire and sword." 
Parkman closes the quotation at this point ; but a very 
different turn is given to the matter in the next sentence, 
taken from the draft of the letter in Gladwin's own 
handwriting, as follows : " But on the contrary, if you 
intend to accommodate matters in spring, which I hope 
you will for the above reasons, it may be necessary to 
send up Sir William Johnson." This is the letter of a 
warrior, who was also somewhat of a statesman. 

Pontiac's conspiracy ended in failure. For five 
months the little garrison at Detroit had been sur- 
rounded by a thousand or more savages ; and nothing 
but the untiring watchfulness and the intrepid coolness 
of the resourceful commandant saved the post from an- 
nihilation and prevented the Indian occupation of the 
Lake country. General Amherst was so well pleased 
with Gladwin's course during the first four months of 
the siege that on September 17th he wrote to the Secre- 
tary at War, Ellis: "As there have been two deputy 
adjutant-generals serving here, I have taken the liberty 
to show a mark of my entire satisfaction of Major 
Gladwin's good conduct and commendable behavior in 
appointing him a deputy adjutant - general ; but to re- 
main with the troops at Detroit in the same manner as 
has been ordered. 1 This is no more than a name, but 
should it be your gracious pleasure to approve it, and 
honor Major Gladwin with the rank of lieutenant- 
colonel, I am firmly of the opinion that the promotion 
of so deserving an officer must at any time be a benefit 
to his Majesty's service, and this is the sole view I have 
in mentioning it to you." 



1 Gladwin MBS., p. 675. 
138 



THE PONTIAC WAR 

It fell to the lot of Colonel Bradstreet, the hero of 
Fort Frontenac, to lead the great force which was .to 
confirm the British power in the Lake country. The 
vainglory of that officer led him to make with the 
Indians a peace which General Gage, who had suc- 
ceeded Amherst, was compelled to repudiate. Brad- 
streefs expedition got no farther than Sandusky, but a 
detachment reached Detroit late in the August of 1764, 
and on the last day of that month Colonel Gladwin 
departed from Niagara on his way to New York. He 
was heartily tired of fighting Indians, and preferred to 
resign rather than to undertake another campaign of 
that kind. Eeturning to England, we find him in 1774 
living a contented life with his wife and children, but 
ready again to take up arms for his king. On a visit 
to London he was presented to George III., who asked 
him how long he had been in town. " Three weeks," 
replied the soldier, to the consternation of George 
"Wert, who wmispered to him to say that he had just 
arrived. " But," says Gladwin, in a letter to General 
Gage, " as I went to court only on that occasion, I 
thought there could be no harm in speaking the truth." 

Gladwin saw no further military service. 1 From 
time to time he was promoted until he reached the 
grade of major-general; and for a quarter of a century 
he enjoyed a well-earned rest. He died on the 22d of 
June, 1791, and a tablet in the Wingerworth church, 
in Derbyshire, still bears record that " early trained to 
arms and martial deeds, he sought for fame amidst the 
toils of hostile war with that ardour which animates 
the breast of a brave soldier. On the plains of North 



1 For a full record of the facts relaxing to Glad win, see Gladwin 
MSS., pp. 606-611. 

139 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

America he reaped the laurels at the battles of Niagara 
and Ticonderoga, in which he was wounded. His cour- 
age was conspicuous, and his memorable defence of Fort 
Detroit against the attacks of the Indians will long be 
recorded in the annals of a grateful country." 



CHAPTER V 
ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION OP THE NORTHWEST 

When England came to sum up her gains in the 
Seven Years' War, she found to her credit an embarrass- 
ment of riches. From France she had wrested both 
Canada and Guadaloupe, besides quieting forever French 
pretensions in India. Spain, taking up the cudgels for 
France after the fall of Quebec, when the ultimate 
triumph of England was assured, had lost Cuba by the 
fall of Havana in 1762. Happy had it been for civili- 
zation had Spain's grip on the " gem of the Antilles " 
been released forever ; but in the readjustments that 
followed she received back Cuba from England in ex- 
change for the Floridas, and from France by secret 
treaty she secured Louisiana, from the Mississippi to 
the Pacific. If Pitt had remained in power to make 
the treaty that his genius and energy had compelled, 
the choice might not have been between restoring to 
France either the fur-producing Canada or Guadaloupe, 
rich in sugar. His ability would have sufficed to con- 
firm to England what her armies and her fleets had 
won. 

To Benjamin Franklin is due the credit, if not for 
the retention of Canada, at least for making the people of 
England appreciate the wisdom of the choice. William 
Burke, the brother, and at this time the thought-sharer, 
of the great Edmund, ingeniously argued for the sugar 

141 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

plantations, and caught the ear of English prejudice, 
both commercial and political, with the proposition that 
it would be good policy to keep an enemy at the back 
of the lusty and arrogant young colonies, whose ideas 
of independence already had begun to alarm the mother- 
country. At this time (1760) Franklin was in London 
as the agent of the Pennsylvania Assembly. Contro- 
versy being the breath of his nostrils, he brought to the 
discussion such a wealth of knowledge, such a keenness 
of sarcasm, and such an intimate acquaintance with the 
conditions in America, that Burke gave him the credit 
of having " said everything, and everything in the best 
manner, that the cause could bear." x 

The apprehensions of American independence he 
brushed aside with the statement that already there 
were fourteen separate governments on the Atlantic ; 
and if the settlements should be extended, probably as 
many more would spring up on the inland side. Not 
only were these colonies under different governors, but 
they had different forms of government, different laws, 
different interests, and some of them different religious 
persuasions and different manners. So great was their 
jealousy of one another that however necessary a union 
of the colonies had long been for their common defence 
and security against their enemies, yet they had never 
agreed either themselves to form such a union, or to ask 
the mother-county to establish it. Nothing but the im- 
mediate command of the crown had been able to pro- 
duce even the imperfect union, but lately seen there, of 
the forces of some colonies. " If they could not agree 
to unite for their defence against the French and Ind- 
ians, who were perpetually harassing their settlements, 

1 Sparks's Franklin, vol. iv., p. 2. 
143 




BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

burning their villages, and murdering their people, could 
it reasonably be supposed there was danger of their 
uniting against their own nation, which protects and 
encourages them, with which they have so many con- 
nections and ties of blood, interest, and affection, and 
which, it is well known, they all love much more than 
they love onev another !" 

So muclfiof the special pleader. Franklin, however, 
seems already to have noted a fall in the barometer. 
"When I say," he continues, "that such a union is im- 
possible, I mean without the most grievous tyranny and 
oppression. . . . While the government is mild and just, 
while important civil and religious rights are secure, 
such subjects will be dutiful and obedient. The waves 
do not rise out when the winds olow" 

He set forth, too, the barbarity of maintaining on the 
frontier of the colonies a nation that, even in times of 
peace between the two crowns, instigated the ravages of 
savages " that delight in war, and take pride in mur- 
der"; and, on the contrary, he showed the advantage 
of providing in the easily accessible lands of the interior 
such an outlet for the increasing population as should 
keep the people to agriculture and thus prevent compe- 
tition with the British manufacturer. The fur regions 
of America were more accessible to London than those 
of Siberia ; American iron and hemp journeyed to mar- 
ket not so far as the Russian ; and already the single 
province of Pennsylvania was taking annually English 
manufactures to the extent of more than a quarter of 
a million pounds sterling. Such reasoning prevailed ; 
Canada became a part of the realm of England. 

The " vast empire on the frozen shores of Ontario," 
added to Great Britain by the energy of the elder Pitt, 
was divided by royal proclamation into four distinct 

143 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAHS 

and separate governments : Quebec, East Florida, West 
Florida, and Grenada. 1 -The government of Quebec had 
for its western boundary a line drawn from Lake Nepis- 
sing to the foot of Lake Champlain. East and West 
Florida included the lands within the present State of 
Florida ; and Grenada comprehended the island of that 
name, together with the Grenadines, Dominico, St. Vin- 
cent, and Tobago. 

Within their respective colonies, governors and coun- 
cils might dispose of the crown lands to settlers ; but no 
governor or commander-in-chief should presume, upon 
any pretence whatever, to grant warrants of survey or 
pass patents for lands beyond the bounds of their re- 
spective governments ; and, until the king's pleasure 
should be further known, the lands beyond the heads or 
sources of any of the rivers which fall into the Atlantic 
were especially reserved to the Indian tribes for hunt- 
ing-grounds. The valle}^ of the Ohio and the country 
about the Great Lakes was not open to settlement or to 
purchase without special leave and license, and all per- 
sons who had either wilfully or inadvertently seated 
themselves upon any lands within the prohibited zone 
between the Alleghanies and the southern limits of the 
Hudson Bay Company's territory were w T arned to re- 
move themselves from such settlements. 

1 For the text of the proclamation October 7, 1763, see Debates of 
the House of Commons, in the year 1774, on the bill for making more 
effectual provision for the government of the province of Quebec, 
drawn up from the notes of the Right Honorable Sir Henry Caven- 
dish, Bart,, member for Lostwithiel : London, 1839. The speeches 
were taken in short-hand by Cavendish and were printed forty-eight 
years later when the subject of Canadian government was again up in 
Parliament. The report also contains Dr. John Mitchell's map of the 
North American provinces prepared in 1735 for the Board of Trade 
and Plantations. The Canadian Archives for 1889 also contain the 
proclamation, in so far as it relates to Indian lands. 

144 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

In order to put a stop to the " great frauds and abuses 
that had been committed in purchasing lands from the 
Indians, to the great prejudice of our interests and to 
the great dissatisfaction of the Indians, and to convince 
the Indians of the justice and determined resolution to 
remove all reasonable cause of discontent," no private 
purchases of Indian lands within the colonies were to be 
allowed ; but all such Indian lands must first be pur- 
chased by the representatives of the crown from the Ind- 
ians in open assembly. Trade with the Indians was to 
be free and open to all British subjects ; but every trader 
w r as to be required to take out a license and to give 
security to observe such regulations as might be made 
for the regulation of such trade. Fugitives from justice 
found within the Indian lands were to be seized and 
returned to the settlements for trial. 

Such was the first charter of the Northwest, if char- 
ter is the correct word to apply to an instrument that 
created a forest preserve, and provided merely for the 
apprehension and deportation of rogues and trespassers. 
To the new provinces was held out the hope that in time 
they might grow into the stature of colonies, each with 
a popular assembly instead of an appointive council; 
and within their borders English law was to prevail ; 
but the Northwest was treated simply as the roaming 
place of savages. 

While the partition of North America was engaging 
the attention of the three great nations of Europe, the 
people of the colonies were eager to occupy the new 
regions won by their valor. The members of the Ohio 
Company, whose enterprise had been rudely checked by 
the French occupation of the lands patented to them, at 
once set about establishing their rights. To this end, 
Colonel Thomas Cresap most diplomatically made over- 

k 145 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

tures to Bouquet, the British commandant at Fort Pitt; 
for on the protection of that garrison all attempts at 
settlement must depend for success. Inasmuch, also, as 
it was the purpose of the company to settle on the lands 
immigrants from Germany and Switzerland, the name 
and fame of the Swiss general, Henry Bouquet, would 
make it quite worth while to enlist the active co-opera- 
tion of this hero of three armies, by admitting him to 
an equal share in their undertaking. 1 

From Presque Isle, whither he had gone to restore 
the fort burned by the retreating French, and to estab- 
lish a base of supplies on Lake Erie, 2 Bouquet sent an 
evasive reply to Colonel Cresap. While leaving open 
the subject of joining the Ohio Company, and admitting 
his ability to procure German and Swiss settlers on 
proper conditions, Bouquet pointed out the fact that by 
the late treaty at Easton, approved and confirmed by 
the ministry at home, the British engaged not to settle 
the lands beyond the Alleghany ; and although the 
governments of Virginia and Maryland did not accede 
to that treaty, still they were equally bound by it, and 

1 The correspondence is to be found in the Canadian Archives for 
1889. Bouquet had served in the Dutch and Sardinian armies ; in 
1754 he and Frederick Haldimaud were selected to raise men for the 
" Royal Americaus," afterwards known as the Sixtieth Rifles, the offi- 
cers of which were either American or foreign Protestants. He died 
at Pensacola, Florida, about September 4, 1765. His papers are calen- 
dared in the Canadian Archives, and many of them have been printed 
in the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections. 

8 Canadian Archives, 1889, Bouquet Correspondence, p. 45 et seq. 
Bouquet left Fort Pitt July 7, 1760, with a detachment, and readied 
Presque Isle on the 17th, the distance being eighty-one anda half miles 
to Venango, then forty-six to Le Bceuf, then fifteen to Presque Isle, 
a total of one hundred and forty-two and a half miles. By the orders 
of General Amherst, Major Henry Gladwin was exploring Lake Erie. 
Monckton was in command at Fort Pitt. 

146 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

no settlement would be permitted on the Ohio until the 
consent of the Indians should be procured. 

It is not unlikely that Bouquet and Franklin had 
talked over plans for the settlement of the country be- 
yond the mountains; for, in the letter to Colonel Cresap, 
Bouquet asserts that the lands are too remote to be de- 
pendent upon any one of the provinces, thus making it 
necessary first to fix the form of government for this 
new colony. This idea, as will appear, was fully de- 
veloped in Franklin's correspondence and argument on 
the Walpole grant. The members of the company, 
several of whom were of his Majesty's council in Vir- 
ginia, treated Bouquet's letter as an acceptance of their 
proposition ; and Lieutenant-colonel Mercer, in a state- 
ment of the financial condition of the enterprise, set 
forth that there were twenty shares on each of which 
£500 had been paid, and the cash on hand together with 
the outstanding debts due to the company made the 
assets upward of £2000. 

Bouquet's answer was a proclamation, dated at Fort 
Pitt, October 30, 1761, in which, after referring to the 
fact that the treaty of Easton preserved as an Indian 
hunting-ground the country to the west of the Allegha- 
nies, he forbade either settlements or hunting in the 
western country, unless by special permission of the 
commander-in-chief or of the governor of one of the 
provinces. 1 As might have been expected, this procla- 
mation gave rise to uneasiness in Virginia, as it seemed 
to obstruct the resettling of lands which had been taken 

1 Canadian Archives, 1889, p. 73. The treaty of Eastern having been 
negotiated under the direction of General Forbes, Bouquet seemed to 
regard it as especially sacred. Indeed, he never was inclined to favor 
the Virginians, or to consider that tliey had any rights beyond the 
mountains. His sympathies were wholly with the Pennsylvanians. 

147 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

up by patent under his Majestj 7- , and from which the 
settlers had been driven by the war. Lieutenant-gov- 
ernor Farquier stated that there were such Virginia 
settlements on the Monongahela, the Greenbrier, and 
the New River to the westward of the Alleghanies, and 
on the waters of the Ohio; and he objected to the re- 
turning settlers being subjected to court-martial proceed- 
ings when they should attempt to secure their homes. 1 

Governor Farquier admitted that he, in common with 
the other governors of provinces, had received, through 
the Lords of Trade and Plantations, orders to make no 
grants of land on the Ohio until his Majesty's further 
pleasure be known ; but Bouquet's proclamation appears 
to have been issued entirely on his own motion, as the 
result of his extensive knowledge of the conditions in 
the western country. Certainly he received no orders 
from General Amherst, whose first information in re- 
gard to Bouquet's action came in a letter from Governor 
Farquier inclosing a copy of the proclamation. Amherst 
saw nothing in the document beyond protection to those 
persons who had a just title, and the exclusion of those 
who had not. At the same time he good-naturedly 
cautioned Bouquet to " avoid doing anything that could 
give the colonies the least room to complain of the 
military power." 

1 Before 1749 there were no settlers in western Virginia. In that 
year a demented man wandered from Frederick County into the 
wilderness of Greenbrier County, and on his return told his neigh- 
bors that he had found streams running northwest. Lured by his 
reports, Jacob Martin and Stephen Sewell built a cabin on Greenbrier 
River. In 1762 a few families established themselves on Muddy Creek 
and the Big Levels. Those families which did not remove as com- 
manded were cut off by the Indians in 1763-64, and from that time 
until 1769 there was not a single white settler in Greenbrier County. 
— De Hass's Indian Wars of Western Virginia, p. 42. 

148 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

Before receiving General Amherst's letter, Bouquet 
had explained to the Virginia authorities that for the 
past two years the western lands had been overrun by 
" vagabonds," who under a pretence of hunting were 
making settlements, of which the Indians made grievous 
and repeated complaints as being contrary to the treaty 
of Easton. In consequence General Monckton had 
ordered the new-comers to be driven off, and when the 
complaints continued Bouquet issued the proclamation 
to prevent such encroachments. Yet notwithstanding 
what he had done, representatives of the Six Nations 
had complained that they had discovered ten new huts 
in the woods, and many fields cleared for corn. All 
such persons Bouquet determined to remove ; and, inas- 
much as there was no civil judicature in that country, 
he proposed to try them by court-martial, a proceeding 
which could in no manner affect any settlement to be 
made thereafter in a part of the country within the 
known limits of one of the provinces. Furthermore, 
the governor was told that it would be necessary to 
obtain orders from the commander-in-chief before any 
patents could be surveyed on the Ohio. 

Governor Farquier professed himself entirely satisfied 
with the answer, and looked forward to an adjustment 
of land matters by an absolute prohibition of all future 
settlements on lands not regularly ceded to the king's 
subjects by the Indians, which cessions would be by 
treaty and not by private purchase. The action of the 
Virginia governor in appealing to Amherst, however, 
rankled in the breast of the Swiss soldier, who wrote 
to his commanding officer that he considered the gov- 
ernor's complaints too trivial to be referred to head- 
quarters. He said further that he had succeeded in 
breaking up the practice of the " outlaws " in making 

149 



y 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

settlements contrary to law ; and he added, what he 
had purposely kept from Governor Farquier, the fact 
that one reason for his action was the importunities of 
Colonel Cresap for him to join in the scheme of the 
Ohio Company to settle Maryland and Virginia families 
on the Ohio. " I foresaw," he says, " that these poor 
people would be ruined by that bubble." He then 
suggests that the real reason for the governor's com- 
plaint was to be found in the fact that he had dared to 
differ from some persons of Virginia about roads and 
provisions in the campaign of 1758, and that he was 
still obnoxious to them. The person from whom he 
differed was George Washington. 1 

"Vagabonds" and "outlaws" Bouquet called those 
settlers who in defiance of Indian treaty and the threat 
of court-martial had planted their cabins and cleared 
their fields beyond the Alleghanies ; and so in the eyes 
of the law they were. Yet they were but the pioneers 
of a mighty immigration that soon was to control the 
valley of the Ohio and to conquer the Northwest. Nay, 
more ; they were part and parcel of that tide of hu- 
manity which, overwhelming the conservative forces 
along the seaboard, was soon to force, both in assembly 
and in the field, the independence of the United States 
of America. Taking their lives in their hands, they 
were ready to fight with the Indians for the possession 

1 Washington strongly advised that Forbes's arm)'' march to Fort 
Duquesne by the Braddock road, which needed few repairs. Bouquet 
however, decided to cut a new road through Pennsylvania, a tedious 
and wasteful operation for the army, but an excellent thing for the 
Pennsylvanians. See Washington to Farquier, Sparks's Washington, 
vol. ii., p. 308 (note). The Bouquet-Washington correspondence is cal- 
endared in the Canadian Archives, 1889. Bouquet always showed a 
high respect for Washington's opinions, although on this occasion he 
did not take the young colonel's advice. 

150 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

of the new lands which their valor had helped to 
conquer for England ; and neither the rights of char- 
tered company nor yet a king's proclamation could stop 
them. At the same time, the treaty of Easton had 
been negotiated at the instance of Bouquet's superior, 
General Forbes, with the express purpose of quieting 
the Ohio Indians by confirming to them the right to 
occupy their lands north of that river; and Bouquet 
was justified in using all means in his power to compel 
the observance of the compact. The task, however, 
was beyond the abilities of any commander. 

With Washington the settlers beyond the Blue Ridge 
had defended Fort Necessity, and their steadiness saved 
from destruction the remnant of Braddock's army. 1 "A 
pernicious and pugnatious people," the Quakers called 
them, and so they were. 2 It has been well said of them 
that " they kept the commandments of God and every- 
thing else they could lay their hands on." 3 They were 
now ready to possess the rich lands on the Ohio in spite 
of the treaty of Easton 4 and Colonel Bouquet's procla- 
mation. 

Meanwhile the Indians throughout the Northwest 
had become aroused at the encroachments of the whites, 
and were preparing to defend their country against the 
invaders. On July 3, 1763, Bouquet, who was moving 
through Pennsylvania with a force of regulars and pro- 
vincials to garrison the posts on the head-waters of the 
Ohio, received news that Presque Isle, Le Boeuf, and Ye- 

1 Proceedings of the Scotch-Irish Congress, 1889, Henry's address, p. 
118. 

2 Ibid., Colonel A. K. McClure's address, 1889, p. 184. 

3 Ibid., Dr. Mcintosh's address, 1889, p. 118. 

4 George Cioghan's journal of the proceedings at the treaty of 
Easton is to be found in the Colonial History of New York, vol. vii., 
p. 280 et seq. 

151 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

nango had been captured by the Indians, and that Fort 
Pitt was invested by savages. In vain he sought sub- 
stantial aid from Pennsylvania. « The people of that 
province were too much engrossed with their quarrels 
with the proprietors to provide efficient protection to 
the frontiers. About noon on the 5th of July, when the 
little army of Highlanders and Kangers was within 
twenty-six miles of Fort Pitt, the savages suddenly at- 
tacked the advance-guard, but were driven from their 
ambush and up the heights. While the action in front 
was in progress another band of savages attacked the 
convoy in the rear, and at nightfall Bouquet found him- 
self completely hemmed in by the enemy, with a loss of 
sixty killed or wounded. In the midst of his dead and 
dying, the gallant leader that night reported to General 
Amherst his "admiration of the cool and steady be- 
havior of the troops, who did not fire a shot without 
orders, and drove the enemy from their posts with fixed 
bayonets." In the morning the savages surrounded the 
camp, and with shouts and yelps made several bold ef- 
forts to penetrate the breastworks hastily constructed 
of bags of flour. Tired by a morning march of seven- 
teen miles and an afternoon of battle, suffering from 
thirst more intolerable than the enemy's fire, even the 
gallant Highlanders and stubborn Rangers were dis- 
heartened when their enemy retreated only to come 
back the stronger when they had lured the soldiers 
from their defences. In his perplexity, Bouquet hit 
upon the daring expedient of ordering two companies 
within the circle of flour bags, and filling the space by 
opening the files on right and left, as if to cover a re- 
treat. The deceived savages with daring intrepidity 
rushed headlong on ; but at the very moment when 
they thought themselves masters of the camp, the com- 

152 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

panies under Major Campbell struck their right flank ; 
and although the savages resolutely returned the fire, 
they could not stand the irresistible shock of the Eng- 
lish. As they turned to run, the soldiers concealed be- 
hind the breastworks poured in a galling fire ; and this 
so overawed the left of the Indian line that they too 
joined in the run. So bravely did the troops behave 
that, as Bouquet reports, "to attempt their eulogium 
would but detract from their merit." 1 

Colonel Bouquet's signal victory over the savages at 
Bushy Run made him the hero of the frontiers, and 
when it was known that he was to lead an expedition 
to the Ohio towns, volunteers flocked to his standard. 
Colonel Cresap promised to bring a party of Virginia 
woodsmen ; Sir William Johnson offered to send a band 
of friendly Indians ; and Pennsylvania undertook to 
raise a thousand men. This change in the temper of 
the colonists was most agreeable to Colonel Bouquet, 
who in times past had chafed at the colonial peace pro- 
clivities, and also at the extreme reluctance of the bor- 
der settlers to protect their own homes and families. 
Even now he was hampered by the militia laws of the 
colonies, that forbade payment for services rendered be- 
yond their own boundaries ; for while Virginia was ever 
ready to claim the territories embraced in the original 
charter, when it came to paying for militia to conquer 
those territories, the authorities at this time construed 
the militia law as limited in its operation to the banks of 
the Ohio. To overcome this obstacle, Bouquet suggested 
that a reward for scalps would make the expedition 
profitable to volunteers ; and he was not in the least 
hard-hearted or blood-thirsty in so doing, for such 

1 Bouquet's reports to Amberst are given in the Canadian Archives, 
1889, pp. 59-71. 

153 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

bounties were so usual among the colonies that we find 
Washington advising the payment of a bounty for the 
scalp of M. Donville, a French officer, " the same as if 
he had been an Indian." 1 

Born near the shores of the beautiful Lake Geneva, 
in the year 1719, Henry Bouquet was seventeen years 
old when he began his military career as a cadet in the 
regiment of Constant, in service of the States-General 
of Holland. Later he served the King of Sardinia as 
an adjutant; and at the battle of Cony he obeyed orders 
by occupying the brink of a precipice and then beguiling 
his men so that they should not become apprehensive of 
the danger of their position. His record of service 
against France and Spain led the Prince of Orange to 
make him a lieutenant-colonel in the regiment of Swiss 
Guards formed at the Hague in 1748 ; and in this 
capacity he was one of the three officers who received 
the towns in the Low Countries evacuated by the 
French, arranging also for the exchange of prisoners 
after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Then came a tour 
of France and Italy with Lord Middleton ; and after- 
wards study of military art and a few years spent in 
the highly intellectual society at the Hague. Sir Joseph 
Yorke, having been acquainted with Bouquet and his 
friend Frederick Haldimand, persuaded them to take 

1 "Monsieur Donville, commander of the party, was killed and 
scalped, and bis instructions found about him. . . . Mr. Paris sent 
the scalp by Jenkins ; and I hope, though it is not an Indian's, they 
will meet with adequate reward." — Washington to Dinwiddie, Sparks's 
Washington, vol. ii., p. 136. 

There was no scalp bounty in Virginia at this time ; but shortly 
afterwards the bounty was £10 for every Indian captured or killed. 
In Maryland the reward was as high as £50. In Massachusetts and 
New Hampshire the bounty varied at different times from £8 to £100. 
—Sparks's Washington, vol. ii., p. 136 (note). 

154 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

service as colonels in the Royal Americans, a regiment 
recruiting among the German settlers of Pennsylvania 
and Maryland, and officered in the main by men who 
had seen hard service in the army of the Dutch Re- 
public. Attractive in person, a vastly entertaining cor- 
respondent with his fellow-officers, Bouquet was yet so 
thoroughly a soldier as to present only a rough edge to 
civilians. He found in his profession that support for 
his pride which a lack of family and fortune had denied. 
Without kith or kin, he sought in vain the love of a 
woman averse to his profession ; and during his Amer- 
ican campaigns he carried on with her a correspondence 
that reveals a depth of feeling one would little suspect 
in a man who seemed entirely self-sufficient. His sol- 
diers believed in him ; the colonial governments highly 
appreciated his services, and men of learning found him 
most congenial. To a rare degree he combined the 
qualities of a resourceful soldier and a careful adminis- 
trator. 1 

1 A sketch of Brigadier-general Henry Bouquet, by George Har- 
rison Fisher, together with a portrait engraved from a painting in the 
possession of Mrs. J. Francis Fisher, is given in the Pennsylvania 
Magazine of History and Biography, vol. iii., No. 2, 1879. The Phila- 
delphia edition (1765) of Bouquet's Expedition, by Dr. William Smith, 
is rare ; there was a London (1766) and an Amsterdam edition (1769) 
in French. In 1868, Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati, reprinted the 
work, with a preface by Francis Parkman and a translation of Dumas's 
biographical sketch from the Amsterdam edition. Harper's Maga- 
zine for October, 1861, has a popular account of the expedition, 
based on the Philadelphia edition. Mr. Fisher's article contains Bou- 
quet's letters to Miss Anne Willing, the last of which is dated at Fort 
Pitt, January 15, 1761. Early in 1762 Miss Willing married a Mr. 
Frances, but recently come from England, and a man of family and 
wealth. In spite of the plain intimations in her letters that she would 
not choose a soldier for a husband, Bouquet seems to have been ill 
prepared for the news of her approaching marriage ; and so deeply 
was he interested that two of his fellow-officers entered into a friend- 

155 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

On August 14, 1764, Bouquet received Bradstreet's 
message from Presque Isle, saying that he had con- 
cluded a peace with the Delawares and Shawanese. In- 
asmuch as murders and depredations by these two na- 
tions continued as before, Bouquet kept up his prepara- 
tions, nor was he to be dissuaded from his purpose by 
the Indians who came to assure him that his force was 
insufficient to withstand the power of the numerous na- 
tions through whose country he was to pass. On Oc- 
tober 3d the long march began. First went a corps of 
volunteers raised in Virginia but paid by Pennsylvania 
to complete its complement. These expert woodsmen 
acted as skirmishers, protecting both flanks of the army. 
Then came the axe -men supported by light infantry; 
these were followed by the regulars of the Forty-third and 
the Sixtieth regiments, marching in three columns; and 
after them as rear-guard and flankers came two platoons 
of Pennsylvania militia, the reserve corps of grenadiers, 
light-horsemen, andVirginia and Pennsylvania volunteers. 
In silence the men marched, and a halt was the signal 
for the whole body to face outward ready for an attack. 

The start was made on Wednesday. On Friday the 
army passed through Logstown, seventeen and a half 
miles from Fort Pitt, a place once noted for the thriving 
trade carried on there between the French and English 
traders and the Shawanese and Delawares, but since 

ly conspiracy first to break the news gently to him, and afterwards 
to soften the blow that evidently had seriously affected his peace of 
mind. His friendship with the Willing family was not interrupt- 
ed, however, and in his will of 1763 Thomas Willing was named as 
executor. Subsequently, however, in the will made just before his 
death in 1765, he appointed his friend and companion, Frederick 
Haldimand, his executor and heir, a trust Haldimand had on his mind 
so late as 1786, as his diary shows. — See Canadian Archives, 1889, p. 
xxvii. and 137. 

156 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

1750 a deserted village. The next day the army filed 
down the steep banks near tbe mouth of the Beaver, and 
below the present town of New Brighton found a ford 
stony and pretty deep. On the fertile bottom-lands 
where the town of Beaver now stands they passed 
through an old French trading-post with its houses of 
hewn logs and chimneys of stone. Thus far the march 
had been like an excursion. On the left was the broad 
river, island strewn, with here a rush of narrowed wa- 
ters and there a spreading of clear water over a bed 
of shale, seen plainly far out into the shallows. Be- 
yond the placid river were stretches of verdure, border- 
ed by hills glorified in the haze of autumn. As they 
marched, the beauties of frost-touched leaf delighted the 
eye, and the pungent smells of forest fires were as in- 
cense to the nostrils. From their triumphant advance 
the Indians either fled or else hid themselves to watch 
its progress and carry a swift report of the invincible 
character of the expedition. 

Turning to the west, Bouquet's little army, now cut 
off from its base of supplies at Fort Pitt, entered the 
Indian country, a region of trackless forests filled with 
unknown numbers of the subtlest savages east of the 
Mississippi. Yet so strict was the discipline of the regu- 
lars, and so vigilant were the volunteers, that not a hos- 
tile shot was fired on the entire march to the Muskingum. 
On the 16th, after a wilderness journey of two weeks, 
Colonel Bouquet was met by six Indians who came as 
an embassy to say that eight miles farther on the sav- 
ages were assembled to sue for peace ; and on the 17th 
the meeting began with the usual formalities of peace- 
pipe and wampum -belts. The Senecas, Dela wares, and 
Shawanese, represented by their chiefs, made the usual 
excuses and the usual promises. On Bouquet's part the 

157 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

ceremonial delay after receiving a message of such im- 
portance was prolonged by autumn rains, so that it was 
the 20th before he made answer. 

Brushing aside as frivolous the Indian excuses that 
they were driven to war by the Western nations, Bou- 
quet charged them with plundering and killing or capt- 
uring the traders who had been sent among them at 
their own request ; with attacking Fort Pitt, which had 
been built with their express consent ; with murdering 
four men who had been sent to them with a public mes- 
sage, thereby violating customs sacred even among bar- 
barous nations ; with attacking the king's troops at 
Bushy Run, and, when defeated, ravaging the frontiers; 
with violating the promises they had made General 
Bradstreet that they would deliver their prisoners to 
him and recall their war-parties. 

" I have brought with me," said Bouquet, " the rela- 
tions of the people you have massacred or taken as pris- 
oners. They are impatient for revenge ; and it is with 
great difficulty that I can protect you against their just 
resentment, which is only restrained by the assurances 
given them that no peace shall ever be concluded until 
you have given us full satisfaction. Your former allies — 
the Ottawas, Chippewas, and Wyandots — have made 
their peace with us; and the Six Nations have joined us 
against you. We now surround you, having possession of 
all the waters of the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Miami's, and 
the lakes. All the French living in those parts are now 
subjects of Great Britain, and dare no longer assist you. 
It is therefore in our power totally to extirpate you. 
But the English are a merciful and generous nation, 
averse to shed the blood even of their most cruel en- 
emies, and if you convince us that you repent 5 T our 
past perfidy and that we can depend on your good be- 

158 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

havior in the future, you may yet hope for mercy and 
peace." 

Thoroughly frightened b}^ Bouquet's threats, and yet 
encouraged by his promises of peace, the savages pre- 
pared to give up their prisoners. A strange scene was 
enacted on the 9th of November, the day fixed for the 
surrender of the two hundred and six captives, more 
than half of whom were women and children. 1 At- 
tended by his principal officers, Colonel Bouquet moved 
to a bower hastily built to answer the purposes of a 
council-chamber. Ranged in ranks opposite to him were 
the Indian ambassadors, a motley array, clad some in 
skins of wild animals, some in shirts of linen or of 
dressed skin, with breech -clouts, and leggings reaching 
half-way up the thigh from their moccasin-covered feet. 
Their heads were shaved, save for a small tuft of hair 
on top ; and their elongated ears and their noses were 
adorned with heavy rings of gold and silver, while their 
faces were streaked with paint of various colors. A rifle, 
shot-pouch, powder-horn, tomahawk, and a scalping-knife 
hanging about the neck, completed the equipment of each 
warrior. 

Kiyashuta, chief of the Senecas, backed by fifteen 
warriors, was the first to speak. " With this string of 
wampum," he said, " we wipe the tears from your eyes. 
We deliver these prisoners, the last of your flesh and 
blood remaining among us. We gather together and 
bury with this belt all the bones of the people that have 
been killed during this unhappy war, which the evil 
spirit has caused. We cover the bones which have 
been buried, that they may never more be remembered. 

1 Of the Virginians there were thirty -two males and fifty - eight 
women and children ; of the Pennsylvania^ forty-nine males and 
sixty-seven women and children. 

159 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Again we cover their place with leaves that it may no 
more be seen. We have been long astray. The path 
between you and us has been stopped. We give this 
belt that it may be cleared again. While you hold it 
fast by one end and we by the other, we shall always 
be able to discover anything that might disturb our 
friendship." 

Bouquet expressed his readiness to join in covering 
the bones of the slain, so that their place might no more 
be known. The king, his master and their father, had 
appointed him to make war. To Sir William Johnson 
belonged the duty of making peace. To him they must 
go; but first they must give hostages that they would 
commit no further violence against his Majesiy's subjects 
until peace should be concluded, and furthermore they 
must agree to abide by the treaty they were to make. 
The next day, the Turkey, the Turtle, and the Casta- 
logas tribes of the Delawares made their peace and 
rendered up six hostages and also five deputies to treat 
with Sir William Johnson ; and on the 12th the haughty 
Shawanese, conscious of ill-doing, put forth Red Hawk 
to clean the ears of the English of the evil stories they 
had heard; to take the tomahawk from their hands and 
throw it up to the Great Spirit to dispose of it as he 
might see fit ; and to grasp with their white brothers 
the chain of friendship, so that the old men, the women 
and the children, should know an end of war. They 
promised to yield their remaining prisoners when the 
others of their nation should return from the hunt ; and 
the}^ asked that the peace treaty made with Pennsyl- 
vania in 1701 might be renewed. 

Peace being now assured, the prisoners were brought 
forth. Then husbands clasped in fond embrace wives 
who had been torn from them months and years ago; 

160 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

mothers recognized in bronzed and naked children the 
babes from whom they had been separated by the 
fortunes of border warfare; brothers with difficulty 
talked with sisters who had forgotten their own lan- 
guage and now understood only the jargon of the forest. 
Saddest sight of all were the men who, hoping against 
hope, had made the long march only to find at the end 
no trace of their lost ones. 

Nor was all joy in the restoration. The Indians, so 
stoical in defeat and torture, now were melted even to 
tears, so reluctant w T ere they to part from captives 
whom they had treated with all the consideration of 
which their savage nature was capable. On the other 
hand, many a woman had found an Indian husband 
from whose embraces she had to be torn ; and many a 
youth bitterly fought against a return to even such light 
restraints as border-life imposed. Offerings of corn and 
horses and skins the Indians brought to ease the jour- 
ney of the returning captives ; and one young Mingo 
warrior, regardless of the danger he ran from revenge- 
ful relatives, was not to be restrained from following 
the object of his affections even to the gates of Fort 
Pitt. 

Without adventure the expedition returned, and for 
a time peace reigned along the Ohio. Bouquet, belong- 
ing to that class of soldiers who look upon war only as 
a means of securing peace, had in mind a plan where- 
by all grants of land westward of the Alleghany Moun- 
tains, including the charter of the Ohio Company, should 
be annulled, also the proprietors of Pennsylvania should 
be brought to surrender that portion of their charter 
which related to lands beyond the mountains, and Vir- 
ginia should have her boundaries curtailed by the ar- 
bitrary action of the king. Then a new military gov- 

L 161 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

ernment might be formed to the westward of the Alle- 
ghanies, thus covering Pennsylvania from Indian at- 
tacks, and enhancing the value of the remaining lands. 1 
The very suggestion of such a plan to the people strug- 
gling to force their way into the fertile Ohio country 
would have aroused overpowering opposition ; and it is 
fortunate for Bouquet's reputation that, as a reward 
for his successful Muskingum expedition, he received 
well -merited promotion, and an assignment to Pensa- 
cola. He had no sooner become settled in his new post, 
however, than he succumbed to disease, and after nearly 
eight years of arduous service in America he died at the 
height of his fame and usefulness. 2 

To follow up the peace conquered by Bouquet, Sir 
"William Johnson sent his deputy, George Croghan, on a 
voyage of discovery to the Illinois country. The mid- 
dle of May, 1765, the party set out from Fort Pitt in 
two bateaux, and were soon joined by deputies of the 
Senecas, Shawanese, and Delawares. Aided by the swift 
current, the light boats made rapid progress down the 
island-strewn river. After a brief stop at the ruins of 
the Shawanese village of Logstown, the party re-em- 
barked and before nightfall passed the old stone chim- 
neys marking the site of the town the French built for 
the Delawares a mile below Beaver Creek ; passed also 
the mouth of the Little Beaver, and reached a camping 
spot near Yellow Creek — a journey of fifty-four miles. 
The next day brought them into the midst of the Seneca 
villages ; on the fourth day they passed the mouth of 
the Muskingum and the Little Kanawha rivers, and 

1 Canadian Archives, 1889, Bouquet to Gage, p. 65. 

2 Bouquet arrived in Philadelphia in April, 1757, aud until 1759 
was employed in South Carolina, with headquarters at Charleston. 
He died at Pensacola some time before September, 1765. 

163 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

came into a country of rich bottom-lands, where roamed 
buffaloes, deer, bears, and turkeys. So plentiful was 
the game that a good hunter, without much fatigue to 
himself, could supply meat for a hundred men. 

From camp on the Ilockhocking, Croghan sent a runner 
to summon the French traders in the Illinois country to 
meet him on the banks of the Scioto, and there swear 
allegiance to his Britannic Majesty, whose subjects they 
had become and whose license to trade they must ob- 
tain. Should the French refuse to obey the summons 
the Shawanese were warned to compel them to come. 
On the 23d they passed the mouth of the Scioto and 
came to the spot where formerly stood the Shawanese 
Lower Town that was washed away by a " fresh," dur- 
ing which, as Croghan relates from personal experience, 
the waters rose until they covered the plateau forty feet 
above the river and stood nine feet deep, compelling the 
inhabitants to take to canoes. Afterwards the Shawa- 
nese built their town on the south side of the Ohio, but 
during the late war they had retired to a safer situation 
on the plains of the Scioto. 1 

From the 24th to the 27th was spent with the French 
traders, and on the last day of May Croghan came to 
the great salt-lick, celebrated as the place where the 
" elephants' bones are found." On the way to the lick, 
which was four miles back from the south bank of the 
Ohio, the party passed along " a large road which the 

1 The record of Croghan's journey must be pieced together from 
his official journal transmitted to Sir William Johnson (New York 
Colonial Documents, vol. vii.. p. 779); his topographical journal, which 
appeared in the Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural 
Science, December, 1831, and is reprinted in Butler's History of Ken- 
tucky; and from a third journal printed in S. P. Hildreth's Pioneer 
History. For a discussion as to these journals, see Narrative ana 
Critical History of America, vol. vi., p. 704. 

163 



•THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

buffaloes have beaten, spacious enough for two wagons 
to go abreast. " On the bank at the edge of the lick 
they found two tusks about six feet in length ; one of 
these they took away with them. On the same clay 
they passed the mouth of the River Kentucky, or Hoi 
sten's River; and on the 1st of June they reached the 
Falls of the Ohio, the present site of Louisville. Six 
days later they arrived at the mouth of the Wabash, 
a river that " runs through one of the finest countries 
in the world, the lands being extremely rich and well 
watered." Making camp, Croghan despatched messages 
to " Lord Frazer," an English officer who had been sent 
from Fort Pitt, and to M. St. Ange, the French com- 
mandant at Fort Chartres. 1 To the Illinois Indians he 
sent belts announcing the peace made with the Dela- 
wares, the Shawanese, and the Six Nations, and sum- 
moning them to conclude matters after the same man- 
ner. 

At daj^break on the 8th, an outbreak of hideous yells 
mingled with the crack of muskets awoke the camp ; 
and Croghan jumped to his feet to receive a shot from 
the concealed enemy. Two of his men and three Ind- 
ians were killed, and but two whites and one Indian 
escaped unhurt. The attacking party was made up of 
eighty Kickapoos and Mascoutens. A wounded Shawa- 
nese, angry and contemptuous, threatened the Kicka- 
poos with the vengeance of the combined nations of the 

1 Lieutenant Alexander Fraser had been sent with a small force to 
Kaskaskia to prepare the way for Croghan. The latter had been de- 
layed by the plunder of his goods by a party of masked men near 
Fort Louden, the country people being fearful lest the traders for 
their own profit would supply the Indians with guns and ammunition 
with which to ravage the frontiers. — See Canadian Archives, 1889, pp. 
278 and 279 ; also Col. James Smith's Account of Remarkable Occur- 
rences. 

164 




.F«^ cJU ,vP 



A FRENCH TRADER 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

north ; but the only effect of the speech was to hasten 
the division of the spoils and to hurry the inarch of the 
prisoners up the Wabash to " Post Vincent." A week's 
march through thin woodland interspersed with broad 
savannas, brought the party to the post, which at that 
time consisted of some fourscore French families settled 
on the east side of the river in the midst of a country 
rich in wheat and tobacco. The French, secretly pleased 
at the misfortunes of the English, speedily began to 
barter for the plunder, and Croghan, himself a veteran 
trader, must have been chagrined indeed to see how the 
price of a pound of vermilion rose to ten half-johannes 
specie, and was eagerly purchased by the Indians with 
the gold and silver stolen from his considerable hoard. 1 
In spite of his misfortune, Croghan noted the excellent 
situation for trade at Vincennes, the village being in a 
fine hunting country, and the distance to the Illinois 
or any other post being too great for the sedentary Ind- 
ians to journey elsewhere for their necessaries. 

Years before either the French or the English knew 
of the Ohio by that name, thejr laid down on their maps 
the Onabash or St. Jerome, rising south of the foot of 
Lake Erie and flowing westward into the Mississippi. 2 
Father Marest, writing from Kaskaskia, in 1712, speaks 
of the " Onabache " as a river of three branches, one ex- 

1 The Johannes of Portugal of 18 d wt. 17 grs. were valued at £4 16s. ; 
then there were current the moydore, the Caroline of Germany, the 
guinea, the lonis d'or, the Spanish or French pistole, the Seville, 
Mexico, or pillar dollar, the French crown or six - livre piece, the 
British shilling, and the pistereen. The dollar was reckoned at eight 
shillings.— See Mich. P. & H. Col, vol. x., p. 214. 

s I have before me a map of North America, "according to the 
most exact observations," dedicated to John, Lord Somraers, presi- 
dent of the Privy Council, by Herman Moll, Geographer, 1719, in 
which the Ohio appears as the "Onabash now R. St. Jerome." 

165 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

tending as far as the Iroquois, another running into 
Virginia and Carolina, and a third heading among the 
Miamis. In his letter, Father Marest mentions the fort 
lately established by the French on the "Wabash, which 
came to be known as " the Post." Some time about the 
year 1732, Francois Morgan de Yinsenne, who had seen 
considerable service in New France, was sent to the 
post on the Wabash. There he quickly acquired land, 
and by his marriage to the daughter of M. Philip Long- 
prie, of Kaskaskia, he obtained for father-in-law the 
wealthiest citizen of that place. Madame Vinsenne was 
unable to write her own name ; but she brought to her 
husband a dot of 100 pistoles, and, at her father's death 
in 1735, 408 pounds of pork was a part of her in- 
heritance by will. It is possible that M. de Yinsenne 
was killed in 1736 during an expedition against the 
Chickasaws, but not before he had given his own name 
to the fort at which he was the only commandant of 
note under the French rule. Indeed, the only other 
name connected with the place before Croghan's advent 
is that of the first missionary, Father Mirmet, who had 
been sent for the spiritual edification of the ancestors 
of Croghan's captors, the Mascoutins, formerly occu- 
pants of the region. 1 

Dividing booty and scalps with the French, whose 
protection they sought, the Kickapoos hurried their 
captives northward through a region where no wood 
was to be seen, the country appearing like an ocean, 
with waving billows of wild hemp. After a journey of 
two hundred and ten miles f rom Yincennes they reach- 
ed Fort Ouiatanon, 2 on the headwaters of the Wabash, 

1 Colonial History of Yincennes, by Judge John Law (Vincennes, 
1858), p. 15 et seq. 

2 Fort Ouiatanon, now Lafayette, Iudiana, was built about 1721. 

166 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

where some fourteen French families were found dwell- 
ing within the palisades, and enjoying a large and profit- 
able traffic in furs. The Indians from whom the post 
took its name were greatly concerned when they learned 
of the folly of the Kickapoos, in so yielding to the wiles 
of the French as to strike a British embassy ; and when 
Croghan received from St. Ange a message inviting him 
to visit Fort Chartres, his well-scared captors were only 
too glad to allow their prisoners to depart in peace. On 
his way he was met by no less a personage than the Ot- 
tawa chief Pontiac, who had come to make peace with 
the envoy of the English. 

As Pontiac and Croghan, 1 subtlest savage and most 

Shea mentions the fact that Father John de Saint Pe went in 1721 
from St. Joseph to the new Fort Ouiatanon. 

1 George Croghan, born in Ireland and schooled in Dublin, had 
his home on the beautiful banks of the wide Susquehanna, near the 
place where the traveller of to-day is shunted back and forth from 
track to track before crossing to the city of Harrisburg. As early as 
1746 he was a trader on Lake Erie, between the old Indian town of 
Sandusky and the site of the present city of Cleveland. His success 
in dealing with savages led Pennsylvania to appoint him Indian 
agent. The French and Indian War plunged him into bankruptcy. 
It appears from a letter addressed by Colonel John Carlyle to Wash- 
ington, on June 17, 1754 (Hamilton's Letters to Washington, vol. i., 
p. 5), that Croghan had agreed to furnish the army with 50,000 lbs. 
of flour that was in store, when he had but a small fraction of the 
amount, and was, according to Carlyle, "not a man of the truth." 
Under Braddock he was a captain ; he built a fort at Aughwick, in 
Huntington County ; and when Pennsylvania treated him ill he be- 
came Sir William Johnson's deputy. In fact, he became a second, 
though a much smaller, Sir William, so essentially similar were these 
two sons of Erin. Shrewd, fair in their dealings with the Indians, 
inflexible in purpose and untiring in action, they served well their 
country, while at the same time they made very handsome profits for 
themselves. Croghan had met Pontiac in 1760, and had formed one 
of the circle about the camp-fire when Robert Rogers was instructing 
the Ottawa chief in the art of war, as they journeyed to receive the 

167 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

stalwart trader, made their way through the swarms 
of now awed and submissive savages, on their return to 
the tumble-down Fort Ouiatanon, the old order passed 
away, giving place to the new. For nearly a century 
the country between the foot of Lake Michigan and the 
mouth of the Ohio had been the pathway of the French 
adventurer on his way to the lower Mississippi, and also 
the favorite field of labor of the devoted servants of the 
Cross. There the intrepid La Salle, the faithful Tonty, 
and the romantic and romancing Hennepin had built 
the monument of their failure in the pitiful Fort Creve- 
cceur ; and there the zealous explorer-priest, Marquette, 
counting it more gain to have saved a perishing soul 
than to have discovered the Mississippi, had contracted 
the disease that cut short his young life. 

Fort Chartres, the seat of government for the Illinois 
country, was a dependency of New Orleans, the major- 
commandant at the upper post being, connected with 
the governor of the province often by ties of relation- 
ship, and always by partnership in trade. Thus was 
realized La Salle's plan of opening a Mississippi channel 
for the fur-trade of the prairies. The legitimate profits 
of the trade were swelled by the system of Indian 

surrender of Detroit. In 1763 Croghan was wrecked on the French 
coast, while on his way to England to give information to the Lords 
of Trade and Plantations respecting the Indian boundary. In 1766 
he settled on the Alleghany, and two years later he acquired 118,000 
acres of land in New York State ; in 1770 he entertained Washington 
on his way to the Kanawha ; he sided with Virginia in the dispute 
as to the boundary between that State and Pennsylvania ; and in 1775 
he took a leading part in the beginnings of the Revolution. He seems 
to have been suspected, however, for Congress made Colonel Morgan 
Indian agent in his place, and he was required to prove his loyalty. 
This he was able to do ; at least he kept possession of his property. 
He died at Passaynak, Pennsylvania, in August, 1782. The Croghan 
who became famous in the War of 1812 was his nephew. 

168 




EVANS'S MAP OF THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

presents, and by license fees required of the traders. 
Presents to the Indians came from the king; but pres- 
ents from the Indians in return were absorbed by the 
commandant and his partner, the governor ; and if any 
trader presumed to traffic without a license from Fort 
Chartres he held his goods at the peril alike of white 
man and of red. To be sure, the Illinois Indians w r ere 
" poor, debauched, and dastardly," and could count not 
more than three hundred and fifty warriors ; but the 
traffic reached to surrounding tribes on the north and 
west, and was both easy of access and of considerable 
volume. 

Lest this lucrative trade should fall into the hands of 
the English, Kerlerec, the governor at New Orleans, had 
sent forth Pierre Laclede Liguest, armed with extensive 
rights of trade on the Missouri ; and in the April of 
1764 his lieutenant, Chouteau, with thirty others, laid 
the foundations of St. Louis, whither the French of the 
Illinois flocked in order to escape the necessity of chang- 
ing their flag. Farther down the river the hamlet of 
St. Genevieve, covering the approach to the lead-mines 
that supplied the country with shot, also built itself up 
at the expense of the Illinois towns. Indeed, the exodus 
of the French threatened to depopulate the Illinois 
county. At Cahokia, opposite St. Louis, the town was 
deserted, excepting only the fine mission - farm of St. 
Sulpice, which, with its thirty slaves, its herd of cattle, 
and its mill for grinding corn and sawing planks, had 
been sold to a thrifty Frenchman not averse to becom- 
ing an English subject. The fathers returned to France. 
The settlement could boast of no more than forty-five 
houses, the poorest of which was called the fort ; and so 
badly selected was the site that the spring freshets tum- 
bled through the broken palisades and overflowed the 

169 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THRIVE FLAGS 

town. At St. Philip, between Cahokia and Fort Char- 
tres, the sixteen houses and the church were deserted by 
all but the captain of militia, who remained with his 
mill, his cattle, and his twenty slaves. The more indus- 
trious and prosperous inhabitants of Prairie du Rocher, 
however, stayed by their wide cornfields, exhibiting the 
proverbial stability of those who build their house upon 
a rock. 

By far the most important settlement in the Illinois 
country was Kaskaskia, where there was at this time a 
small fort destined to be destroyed by fire during the 
ensuing year (1766) and to be replaced in 1772 by Fort 
Gage, the successor of Fort Chartres. The sixty - five 
families dwelt in houses of stone; and so convenient was 
the natural wharfage that heavy bateaux lay with their 
sides to the bank, ready for loading. The establish- 
ment that gave to the town prosperity and name — 
Notre Dame de Cascasquias — was the well-tilled Jesuit 
farm of two hundred and forty arpents ; but when the 
command went forth for the suppression of the Jesuits, 
this entire property was sold, ostensibly for the benefit 
of the crown, to M. Beauvais, the richest man in the 
Illinois country. Eighty slaves were employed either 
in the well-built mill that ground the corn and wheat 
and sawed the planks, or in the wealth-producing brew- 
ery ; and in one season the opulent proprietor sold the 
king eighty -six thousand pounds of flour without part- 
ing with more than a portion of his harvest. 

Fort Chartres itself had the reputation of being "the 
most commodious and best built fort in North America" ; 
commodious possibly because four dungeons were in- 
cluded within its subterranean depths; well-built, either 
because its walls of but two feet and two inches in thick- 
ness were plastered over to present a smooth surface, 

170 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

or else because the entrance to the fortress led through 
a handsome rustic gate — a touch of the incongruous 
truly French. An irregular quadrilateral, with a length 
of four hundred and ninety feet, the fort was partly sur- 
rounded by a half-finished ditch ; and its bastions were 
supplied with more port-holes than cannon. The town 
at its foot had once boasted as many as forty families, 
who gathered on Sundays and saints' days at the 
Church of St. Ann, where a Franciscan father shep- 
herded the flock; but during the nine } 7 ears since the 
rebuilding of the fort in 1756, a more relentless enemy 
than either red -skin or red -coat had threatened both 
town and fortress. The capricious river, then as now 
laughing at the works of man, had eaten away so much 
of the half mile of land between fort and water that 
scarcely more than eighty paces remained; and the 
French families, except three or four of the poorest 
ones, had crossed to the other shore. Seven years after 
Croghan's visit the British were forced to abandon the 
fort, whose dungeons were occupied, probably for the 
first time, by the waters of the Mississippi. Having 
accomplished this work of destruction the Father of 
Rivers withdrew himself, and the ruins of Fort Chartres 
are now a mile inland. 1 

While many of the well-established French remained 
to await the coming of the English, and numbers of 
the less prosperous transported their belongings to St. 
Louis or St. Genevieve, still others embarked with De 
Villiere to swell the population of New Orleans, already 
a city of some six or seven thousand people. Following 
them had gone messengers from Pontiac to stir up the 



'Captain Philip Pittman's Present State of European Settlements on 
the Mississippi (London, 1770), and Winsor's Westward Movement, p. 26. 

171 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

river Indians to oppose the English, and so effective 
were these exhortations that the expedition of Major 
Loftus was turned back in the spring of 1764, and that 
of Captain Pittman, a few months later, met no better 
success in its efforts to reach the Illinois country. Re- 
joiced by these triumphs of his allies, and unwilling to 
yield so long as a single spark of hope remained, Pontiac 
despatched an embassy to New Orleans imploring and 
demanding that the French unite with their ancient 
friends the Indians to drive " the red dogs " from the 
land. Death spared D'Abbadie the dire necessity of 
telling the Indians that from their fathers, the French, 
also the broad lands of the Western continent had been 
taken away by the powers over-seas ; and that even the 
unknown lands beyond the Mississippi had passed into 
the possession of Spain. From Aubry, the successor of 
D'Abbadie, the embassy received the message that, on 
being delivered to Pontiac during the March of 1765, 
broke the spirit of the persistent Ottawa chieftain, and 
at last forced him to the resolution of making peace 
with dignity. 

The genuineness of Pontiac's resolve had been tested 
even before Croghan's arrival. Eager to forestall any 
change of sentiment on the part of the Illinois people, 
General Gage had sent ahead Lieutenant Fraser with 
letters to St. Ange de Bellerive, the commandant at 
Fort Chartres. Fraser was received with favor by 
the much perturbed Frenchman, who joyfully looked 
forward to a relief from an intolerable situation, where 
he was beset on one side b\ r the Indians and the French 
traders eager to make war on the English, while on the 
other hand he had positive orders to keep the peace 
until a British force should come to occupy the post. 
The traders, however, roughly used the young lieuten- 

172 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

ant, and in the drunken commotion that occurred he 
narrowly escaped with his life. The next day, how- 
ever, Pontiac having recovered the use of his reason, 
took Fraser under his own protection. 1 Croghan's mis- 
sion to the Illinois having paved the way for the peace- 
ful occupation of the British, Captain Sterling and a 
hundred Highlanders descended the Ohio ; and, five 
years after the surrender of Detroit, on October 10, 1765, 
St. Ange had the mournful honor and the secret relief of 
hauling down the last French flag in the Northwest. 

The great chief Pontiac might indeed make way for 
Croghan; but his own dignity demanded that his sub- 
mission be made to a higher power. Accordingly we 
find him at Oswego in the June of 1766, professing to 
Sir William Johnson that he had taken Colonel Cro-. 
ghan by the hand and had never let go his hold, because 
he saw that the Great Spirit would have him a friend of 
the English. Eeturning to his wives and children, Pon- 
tiac settled down to the regular life of the Indian on 
the banks of the Maumee. In April, 1769, he appeared 
at St. Louis, apparently on a visit of friendship to St. 
Ange. One day he crossed to Cahokia to join .in an 
Indian celebration; and on his return from the carousal 
he was tomahawked by an Illinois Indian, who had 
been bribed to do the deed by an English trader, Wil- 
kinson b}^ name, the payment being a barrel of rum. 2 
St. Ange, ready to do justice to the memory of the 
greatest among Indians, gave his body, clad in the full 

1 Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, vol. x., p. 216. 

2 After carefully examining the various conflicting accouuts of 
Pontiac's death, preserved among the Parkman MSS., I have fol- 
lowed Mr. Parkman's account, in spite of Winsor's doubts. Park- 
man had the details from Lyman C. Draper, who obtained them from 
Col. L. V. Bogy, of St. Louis, to whom Chouteau related them. See 
also Pennsylvania Gazette, August 17, 1769. 

173 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

uniform of a French officer — a gift from Montcalm him- 
self — a military burial near the Council - house at St. 
Louis ; and there the forest warrior found peace. 

Returning now to George Croghan, whom we left at 
Fort Ouiatanon, we find him ready to push northward to 
carry to his principal the tidings of his success. Cross- 
ing to the Eel River, he came to the village of the 
Twightwees, on the river St. Joseph, near its junction 
with the Miami. The hundred Indian cabins were sup- 
plemented by nine or ten huts that housed a runawajr 
colon}^ from Detroit, Frenchmen who, having been con- 
cerned in Pontiac's war, had retired to this place to 
escape the just punishment of evil-doing. Then drop- 
ping down the Miami through Ottawa and Wyandotte 
villages, Croghan came to Lake Erie, and on August 
16th, after a journey of three months, he reached De- 
troit, where he passed a month or more in holding 
satisfactory conferences with the Indians. Then, hav- 
ing traversed a very considerable portion of the new 
possessions of the English, he set out for Niagara. 

Great issues were depending on George Croghan's 
voyage down the Ohio. We have seen that Colonel 
Bouquet was convinced that the Ohio country should 
be organized as a separate colony. This obvious con- 
clusion was also reached by others conversant with the 
situation; notably by Sir William Johnson, who had 
taken a keen interest in Bouquet's expedition and who 
had despatched Croghan to make peace with the remote 
tribes of the Illinois. Thus it happened that while the 
deputy Indian agent was making his explorations, a 
strong company was organizing to obtain the control 
of the territory lying between the Alleghanies and the 
Ohio, with the purpose of beginning there a new gov- 
ernment. On this side of the Atlantic the leading 

174 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

spirits in the scheme were Sir William Johnson and 
Governor Franklin, of New Jersey. The head of the 
company, however, was Thomas Walpole, a London 
banker; and its most active promoter was Benjamin 
Franklin, who had returned to London as the agent of 
Pennsylvania. When the matter was mentioned to 
Franklin he wrote home to his son, the governor: "I 
like the project of a colony in the Illinois country, and 
will forward it to my utmost here." 

Two things were necessary to the success of the enter- 
prise: first, a grant must be obtained from the crown; 
and, secondly, the Indians must be prevailed upon to 
relinquish their title as occupants of the lands. The 
plan for the new colony was drawn by Sir William 
Johnson, and Franklin placed it before the king in 
council. In order to strengthen the position, a few 
persons of influence were taken into the company. 
Franklin won a reluctant approval from Lord Shel- 
burne, but found a strenuous opponent in Lord Hills- 
borough, who was then at the head of the Board of 
Trade and Plantations. The latter was very much 
afraid that if the Ohio lands should be opened to set- 
tlement, all Ireland would resort thither — a very rea- 
sonable apprehension, considering the fact that the 
Scotch-Irish already peopled the frontiers. Then, too, 
colonies remote from the sea -coast would force the 
people into manufactures, to the detriment of English 
trade. Moreover, distant posts meant enormous crown 
expenses; and Indian superintendency had already be- 
come so expensive that a return to the colonial man- 
agement of Indian affairs was seriously contemplated 
as a means of relieving the nation of so vast an outlay. 1 

1 " I was again at Lord Shelburne's a few clays since, and said a good 

175 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Besides all else, a new colony beyond the mountains 
might prove too independent of the home government, 
and so foment independence in the other colonies. 

Croghan's journal and Sir William's letters were used 
with good effect; and to obtain still greater weight for 
the plan, General Lyman, who was urging the re- 
newal of the grant to the old Ohio Company, was in- 
duced to unite his forces with those championing the 
Walpole grant. In case the superintendencies should 
be abolished, Sir William was to be provided for by 
making him governor of the new colony. Then, too, 
in order to clear away the Indian title, Franklin had 
instructions sent to Sir William to enter into a treaty 
with the savages. To accomplish this much required 
two years. 1 

Sir William Johnson was eager enough to conclude 
the Indian boundary. Indeed, either he or his friends 
had urged Franklin to procure orders for the settlement 
of this vexed question ; for, without orders, Sir William 
could not charge up to the crown the goods and pro- 
visions with which this thrifty trader supplied the Ind- 
ians in council. It is not necessary to seek private 
motives for Sir William's haste; the Indian situation 

deal to him on the affair of the Illinois settlement. He was pleased to 
say he really approved of it; but intimated that every new proposed 
expense for America would meet with great difficulty here, the treas- 
ury being alarmed and astonished at the growing charges there, and 
the heavy accounts and drafts continually brought in from thence. 
That Major Farmer, for instance, had lately drawn for no less than 
£30,000 extraordinary charges, on his going to take possession of the 
Illinois ; and that the superintendents, particularly the southern one, 
began also to draw very largely. He spoke, however, very hand- 
somely of Sir William on many accounts." — Franklin to his son, 
Sparks's Franklin, vol. iv., p. 236. 

1 Franklin's correspondence with his son, in regard to the Walpole 
grant, begins iu March, 1766, and euds in March, 1768. 

176 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

made the settlement of boundaries imperative. At the 
Congress held at the German Flats in 1765 the Six Na- 
tions had offered to part with their title to all their 
lands east of the Ohio ; but this offer had been neg- 
lected. The Indians resented the delay, and especially 
resented the lack of presents and supplies. A great 
gathering of Delawares and Senecas was held in the 
Shawanese country on the Scioto in March of that 
year; and English traders on the Ohio had their ba- 
teaux stopped and the ammunition, scalping-knives, and 
tomahawks stolen. Pennsylvania, taking alarm at these 
unmistakable signs of an Indian uprising, voted £2500 
to be used by Sir William in gifts to those savages who 
had lost relatives in border warfare. The astute super- 
intendent accepted the appropriation, with the remark 
that " good laws vigorously enforced are the best guar- 
antee against Indian resentment." ' 

During the winter of 1767-68 the newspapers had been 
full of reports of the fertility of the Ohio valley; and 
from the frontiersmen the Indians quickly learned about 
the projects to form new settlements in that region. The 
Six Nations complained that when they went to hunt in 
their own land it wearied them to climb the fences of 
the white men ; and that there were neither deer to 
shoot nor trees to furnish bark for their huts. In Feb- 
ruary, 1768, however, Sir William received his belated 
orders to perfect the boundary; and as a preliminary 
thereto he accommodated the troubles between the Chero- 
kees and the Six Nations, using Pennsylvania's appro- 
priation for the purpose. At this time the Six Nations 
claimed the lands between the Ohio and the Alleghanies, 
by virtue of their conquests over the tribes resorting to 

1 Stone's Life of Sir William Johnson, vol. ii., p. 296. 
m 177 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

those regions. Indeed, the claims of the Iroquois Con- 
federacy included the whole territory westward from 
New York to the Mississippi ; but whatever may have 
been their conquests in the past, it is certain that at this 
time the Western Confederacy was scarcely less strong 
than the Eastern; and that the tribes occupying the 
lands northwest of the Ohio admitted no control what- 
ever on the part of their ancient conquerors, the Iroquois, 
although they met with them in council. As to the 
lands south of the Ohio, the case was different. That 
region was in the possession of no one tribe, but was the 
hunting-grounds of many tribes — " the dark and bloody 
ground" where savage fought with savage after the 
manner of their kind. 

It was fitting that the treaty for the transfer of title 
to this region should take place in the country of the 
Iroquois, the traditional friends and allies of the English, 
and that it should be conducted by Sir William Johnson. 
At Fort Orange, on July 21, 1661, a little band of Dutch 
immigrants led by Arendt Yan Curler, a cousin of the 
absentee Patroon Yan Rensselaer, purchased from the 
Mohawk chiefs the site of an old Indian village. Early 
the next spring they settled on this site, and for a time 
the place was known as Corlaer; but after the Eng- 
lish conquest the old Indian name of Schenectady was 
adopted. Freed from the trammels of feudalism, these 
settlers held their lands in fee-simple; and, after a pro- 
longed struggle against both the colony and the manor 
restrictive policy, they established for themselves, in 1727, 
freedom to trade with the Indians. Through the open 
door of Sclienectad}^ poured a flood of German immigra- 
tion from the Rhine valley — a vigorous, liberty-loving 
people, who proved extremely troublesome to the church- 
and- state powers that were in control in the colony. 

178 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

In the year 1738, William Johnson, a young Irishman 
from County Meath, made his way to the banks of the 
Mohawk as the agent of his uncle, Captain Peter Warren, 
R. N., who was the possessor of some fifteen thousand 
acres of wilderness. Young Johnson speedily placed 
settlers on the lands, opened a country store, began 
to clear his own farm, and married the daughter of a 
German settler. He never lied to, cheated, or deceived 
an Indian; .and he never granted to a savage what he 
had once refused. This rule, early adopted, gave him 
an ever -increasing influence with the Indians, and en- 
abled him to build up a trade that took his agents to the 
remote tribes from the St. Lawrence wellnigh to the 
Mississippi, and gave him commercial connections in 
London and the West Indies as well as in the Atlantic 
seaboard cities. The policy of Van Curler and Peter 
Schuyler in dealing with the Iroquois was adopted by 
Johnson; he talked with them in their own language, 
and in no punctilio of savage etiquette was he wanting. 
The ready words inspired by the Blarney-stone with him 
took the form of trope and metaphor drawn from those 
powers of nature so dear to the Indian mind. On the 
death of his wife he took for his companion a sister of 
that Joseph Brant whose name became a terror to Amer- 
ican patriots of the Revolution ; and by the Indian alli- 
ance as well as by his adoption into the Mohawk tribe 
he confirmed his power over the savages. 

At the Albany conference of 1740, Johnson, hideous 
in the war-paint and feathers of his tribe, led the Mohawk 
band ; in the old French War he had command of the 
frontier, with the rank of colonel; in 1750 he took his 
seat in the governor's council, and with that represent- 
ative of royalty made a stand for prerogative as against 
the growing power of the assembly. At the celebrated 

179 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Albany Congress in 1754, the forerunner of the Revolu- 
tionary Congress, Johnson took the lead in those deal- 
ings of the nine colonies with the Iroquois which attach- 
ed the Six Nations to the cause of the English in the 
struggle for the Ohio valley; and thus he paved the way 
for his appointment by Braddock as superintendent of 
Indian affairs. In the Seven Years' War Johnson by 
his military successes, particularly at Niagara, had in- 
creased his prestige with the home government; and 
in all Indian matters he was, easily the first man in 
America. 

By September, 1768, all was prepared for the council 
that was to move the boundary westward from the Al- 
leghanies to the Ohio. Fort Stanwix, on the present 
site of Rome, New York, was the gathering -place, and 
thither repaired Sir William, attended by his three dep- 
uties, George Croghan, Daniel Claus, and Guy John- 
son. Governor Franklin of New Jerse}^, Lieutenant- 
Governor Penn, and commissioners from Pennsjdvania 
and Virginia also were in attendance. The Indians were 
slow in arriving, the Senecas having been detained by 
the death of a sachem, and the Delawares and Shawanese 
having dallied with belts and promises from the French 
and Spanish of the Mississippi. On September 24th, Sir 
William's deputies reported thirty-two hundred Indians 
in attendance, and the council began with the usual 
ceremonies. For six days the Indians pondered the prop- 
osition to buy their lands, and on the seventh day they 
assented, but not without many promises and presents 
to the influential sachems. For six thousand dollars in 
money and goods the Indian title to Kentucky, West 
Virginia, and the western portion of Pennsylvania was 
acquired by the crown. Thus was the way opened for 
a new colony beyond the Alleghanies. 

180 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

In his treaty Sir William had exceeded his instruc- 
tions. Lord Hillsborough had sent to him a map of the 
boundaries he proposed. These stopped at the mouth 
of the Great Kanawha instead of the Tennessee; but, 
Sir William preferred to offend Lord Hillsborough in 
England rather than to incur the anger of the ever- 
present Six Nations, who insisted on parting with the 
larger territory in order to show their authority over 
lands claimed also by the Cherokees. Had the more 
restricted boundary been adopted, mortal offence would 
have been given to the northern Indians, who claimed 
to have conquered all the lands to the Mississippi. 
In vain Lord Hillsborough referred the matter back 
for adjustment in accordance with his ideas. Sir Will- 
iam professed himself earnest to cede back to the Ind- 
ians a portion of the grant. They would not have 
it so. 

For two years more the Illinois project lay dormant; 
but on May 25, 1770, the council sent Walpole's peti- 
tion to the Board of Trade. The Lords Commissioners, 
after two more years of delay, reported against the 
proposition. The report, drawn by Lord Hillsborough, 
after reciting that portions of the proposed grant were 
in the colony of Virginia, and other portions were Ind- 
ian hunting-grounds, reminded the Lords of the Treasury 
" of that principle which was adopted by this Board, and 
approved and confirmed by his Majesty, immediately 
after the treaty of Paris — viz., the confining the western 
extent of settlements to such a distance from the sea- 
coast as that those settlements should lie within reach 
of the trade and commerce of this kingdom, upon which 
the strength and riches of it depend, and also of the ex- 
ercise of that authority and jurisdiction which was con- 
ceived to be necessary for the preservation of the colo- 

181 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

nies in a due subordination to, and dependence upon, the 
mother-country." ' 

Franklin toyed with Lord Hillsborough's adverse re- 
port in much the same manner that a cat plays with a 
mouse. He corrected its geography and its history ; he 
controverted its arguments ; and he proved to the satis- 
faction of the king in council that the royal heart had 
never been so cold and selfish as the Lords Commission- 
ers for Trade and Plantations would have his Majesty 
believe it was in 1763, when, it was alleged, he would 
have confined his loving subjects in America to the 
lands east of the Alleghanies. The grant to the Ohio 
Company proved that settlements to the westward 
were contemplated, and the restrictions of 1763 were 
but temporary, until the lands should be purchased 
from the Indians. This purchase had been made by the 
treaty of Fort Stanwix ; and Pennsylvania, by virtue 
of that treaty, had already erected Bedford County 
from territory beyond the mountains, and was exercis- 
ing civil government therein. 2 

Franklin's argument was unanswerable. The offer 
of the company was to repay to the crown the £10,460 
7s. 3d., which was all the money the whole country (of 
which the Walpole grant was only a part) cost the gov- 
ernment ; in addition quit-rents, to begin twenty years 
after the survey of each lot or plantation, were to be 
paid to the king's agent. The expenses of civil gov- 
ernment were to be borne by the proprietors. This 
offer was accepted, and on August 14, 1772, the "Wal- 
pole grant was approved. Lord Hillsborough, cha- 

1 Sparks's Franklin, vol. iv., p. 305. 

2 Sparks gives the report of the Board of Trade, Franklin's reply, 
and the proclamation of 1763. See Franklin's Works, vol. iv., pp. 
302-380. 

182 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

grined and humiliated at Franklin's triumph, offered his 
resignation, as perhaps his colleagues expected he would 
do ; and, much to his surprise, he promptly found him- 
self out of office. He was succeeded by Lord Dart- 
mouth, reputed to be a friend of the colonies. 

Kumors of the proposed new colony of Vandalia were 
rife in Virginia, and George Washington was ill pleased 
with a scheme which seemed likely to prevent him from 
locating the twenty-five thousand acres that were due 
to him for services rendered in the French war ; nor 
was he satisfied with the coalition made by the agent 
of the Ohio Company and the promoters of the Wal- 
pole grant. 1 As it happened, however, an especial res- 
ervation was made in that grant in favor of the bounty 
lands provided for in the proclamation of 1763, so that 
Washington's individual claims were interfered with in 
nowise. 

Bouquet, and after him Gage, saw the military ad- 
vantage of interposing a strong government between 
the seaboard colonies and the Indians. Sir William 
Johnson, the Franklins ( father and son), the restless, 
enterprising, and well-informed Pownall, who had car- 
ried back to England a wide knowledge of America, 
and such influential merchants as Walpole, all recog- 
nized the commercial advantages of a proprietary prov- 
ince on the Ohio ; but the day for new royal colonies in 
America had passed. The Walpole grant, like the Ohio 
Company's concession, was doomed to failure. Nor was 
there the slightest hope of success, either in the king's 

1 The basis of combination was that the members of the Ohio Com- 
pany were to receive two shares, or one thirty-sixth, of the stock of 
"Walpole's, or the Grand Company, as it was called. These terms 
were never approved by the Ohio Company; and, as a matter of fact, 
neither the Ohio nor the Walpole grant was ever completed. 

183 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

cabinet or in America, for the Mississippi Company ! or 
any other of the numerous associations formed for the 
purpose of acquiring lands from the Indians and plant- 
ing thereon settlers subject to quit-rents, religious estab- 
lishments, and governments privately supported. 

That numerous, hardy, independent, and often lawless 
population which had occupied the frontiers of Virginia 
was now read}' to push westward, and, in the wilderness 
south of the Ohio, to make homes for their children. 
They went first as hunters, then as prospectors, and 
finally as settlers. They purchased lands with bullets, 
and surveyed claims with tomahawks. As Virginians 
they built their cabins Avithin the original boundaries of 
their own colony, and to their colony they looked for 
protection. Singly or in groups these adventurous 
backwoodsmen hunted big game, set up "tomahawk 
claims," cleared fields, built cabins, and began to people 
the wilderness. Even Washington, with land claims 
purchased by his valor, was unable to make headway 
against this swarming of new people into new lands. 

In the autumn of 1770, when Washington, piloted by 
George Croghan and accompanied by his surveyor 
Crawford, descended the Ohio to the Kanawha, the 
lonely banks of the beautiful river gave no indications 
that soon a mighty human stream would flow down 

1 A copy of the articles of association of the Mississippi Company 
was recently discovered among the manuscripts in the Library of 
Congress, by Mr. Herbert Friedenwald. It covers three large pages 
closely written by George Washington, and is dated June 3, 1763. 
The first name is that of Francis Lightfoot Lee, the next is John Au- 
gustine Washington, and among the nineteen are the names of Rich- 
ard Henry Lee, Henry Fitzhugh, and Thomas Bullitt, the latter being 
one of the earliest settlers of Kentucky. Washington's name stands 
at the end. The company was organized to send an agent to England 
to obtain a grant of lands on the Mississippi and its waters. 

184 




xm 




DANIEL BOONE 

(1 ioiii a painting by Chestor Harding, owned by \V. H. Kiug, Chicago. Photographed 
by C. L. Moore, Springfield, Mass.) 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

that winding course. Yet in the previous year Daniel 
and Squire Boone, with a party of hunters, had started 
to explore the Kentucky wilderness ; and during the 
year 1773 the blue-grass conntry was crossed by many 
a bold home-seeker like Simon Kenton and the three 
brothers McAfee, who had taken life in hand while 
venturing into the favorite hunting-grounds of savages 
eager for scalps. In September, 1773, Daniel Boone led 
his own family, with five other families and forty fron- 
tiersmen, from the Yadkin over the mountains, with the 
intention of settling in Kentucky. Attacked by Indians, 
they made a resting-place on the Clinch Kiver. In April, 
174-1, Floyd, with a party of surveyors, began to survey 
military lands on the Kanawha for Patrick Henry and 
Washington. While voyaging down the Ohio on their 
way to Kentucky, they were overtaken by a messenger 
sent from Fort Pitt to warn them that they were in dan- 
ger of being cut off by an Indian war. 1 

Besides the Kentucky explorers, who had crossed the 
mountains, a considerable number of Virginians had 
settled along the Ohio below Fort Pitt, thereby en- 
croaching on the lands of the Delawares and Shawa- 
nese. At this time Pittsburg was a Virginia town, 
although Pennsylvania claimed the territory. The 
royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, now found 
himself in a perplexing situation. The Walpole grant 
threatened to carve a new province out of the colony of 

1 Id 1747 Dr. Walker, of Virginia, led an exploring party through 
northeastern Kentucky, and named the Cumberland River for "the 
Bloody Duke"; and in 1767 John Finley, of North Carolina, made a 
visit to the same region. Fiuley was one of Boone's party of 1769. 
For the details of Boone's trip, see Filson's Boone and Mann Butler's 
Kentucky. There are no more fascinating chapters in Roosevelt's 
Winning of the West than those in the first volume which relate to the 
settlement of Kentucky. 

185 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

which he was governor; the Pennsylvania traders and 
the adherents of Lord Dunmore's representative, Dr. 
Conolly, had almost come to blows over the possession 
of the forks of the Ohio ; and the Virginia settlers in 
the western country were clamoring for aid against Ind- 
ian attacks. 1 

Besides the threatened encroachments on the territory 
of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, in common with his fellow 
royal governors, was called upon to face the steady, 
persistent, determined opposition of the responsible 
men of his colony to the peculiar measures by which 
Great Britain was undertaking to bring America into 
subjection. Nine years had passed since that May day 
in 1765 when Patrick Henry dared to set up the two- 
sided shield of treason and independence. The stamp 
act had been passed and repealed ; non-intercourse reso- 
lutions, offered by the conservative "Washington, had 
been adopted ; and already, by the effective methods of 
the committees of correspondence, colonists were being 
transformed into Americans. Boston, no longer a far- 
off town of mere traders, had become to Virginians a 
martyr to the cause of liberty, and her citizens were 
indeed brothers in adversity. The suave Lord Bote- 

1 The Indians slew the Virginians because they came as settlers, 
but spared the Pennsylvania traders. The tale of Indian robberies 
and massacres is far too long to tell. Lyman C. Draper, certainly a 
good authority, estimates that during the ten years of so-called peace 
that followed Bouquet's expedition, more lives were sacrificed along 
the western frontiers than duriug the whole outbreak of 1774, includ- 
ing the battle of Point Pleasant.— Brantz Mayer's Tali- Gah- Jute ; or, 
Logan and Cresap (Albany, 1867), p. 67. 

Lord Dunmore, before he could possibly have known of the Great- 
house murders, had issued (April 25, 1774) a proclamation referring 
to the Pittsburg territorial troubles, and calling out the militia to 
repel any assault whatever, thus showing that he proposed to sustain 
Dr. Conolly no less than to chastise the savages. 

186 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

tourt had indeed kept the fire from breaking through 
the roof, but his successor in office, the impulsive Earl 
of Dunmore, found that the grave and courtly Virgin- 
ians, while punctiliously courteous to himself and his 
attractive family, fasted and prayed to be delivered 
from the tyranny whose agent and exemplar he was.' 

Add to all these troubles the circumstance that Lord 
Dunmore was anxious to obtain for himself a share in 
the rich domain that was awaiting the settler's axe, and 
one has a sufficient number of reasons why the chief 
magistrate of Virginia might well feel that it would be 
a capital stroke to use Pittsburg as the headquarters for 
a Virginia military expedition which should confirm the 
title of his colony not only to that important post, but 
also to the entire Ohio country, while at the same time 
attention might be diverted from English troubles, a 
patriotic sentiment on behalf of the border settlers 
might be aroused, and an opportunity provided to ob- 
tain from the Indians extensive lands in the Illinois 
country. 4 

1 Washington went from a meeting at the Raleigh Tavern, where 
the Boston bill was denounced, to dine with Lord Dunmore ; next day 
the two rode together, and in the evening Washington attended her 
ladyship's ball; but on the day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, 
he fasted and attended the appointed services. See Lodge's Washing- 
ton, vol. i., p. 119. 

2 It appears from Chief -justice Marshall's decision in Johnson v. 
Mcintosh (8 Wieaton), that on July 5, 1773, a large portion of the Illi- 
nois country lying on the Mississippi was purchased at an Indian 
council held at Kaskaskia, by a company of London, Pennsylvania, 
and Illinois people; and on October 18, 1775, the principal persons in 
the first purchase were associated with Lord Dunmore and Honorable 
John Murray, his son, in two grants on the Wabash near Vincennes. 
The title ran to the purchasers, or to the King of England for their 
benefit, and the lands were described as being within the chartered 
limits of Virginia. After the Revolution the assigns of the original 
grantees undertook to establish claim to the lands in question ; but 

187 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

The particular occasion for the Indian war of 1774 
was an attack made by some thieving Cherokees, one 
April night, on three of trader Butler's men. Dr. Con- 
oily, as the representative of Virginia, immediately called 
on the frontiersmen to hold themselves read}' to repel 
an attack of hostile Shawanese. Among those who 
jumped to the call was Michael Cresap (a son of Wash- 
ington's frontier friend and partner in the Ohio Com- 
pany's venture), Avho was then at the head of a band of 
explorers pausing at Wheeling until they could make 
certain whether there was to be an Indian uprising. 
Cresap's party made a bad matter worse by ambushing 
and killing two Shawanese employed by Butler to re- 
cover his plundered goods ; and the passion for blood, 
which was so often to manifest itself in the vicinity of 
Pittsburg, having got hold upon them, the}' determined 
to hasten to the mouth of the Big Beaver and there at- 
tack the camp of Logan, an Iroquois of commanding in- 
fluence among Indians and also much trusted by the 
settlers. Calmer judgment, however, led them to turn 
back ; but before April closed ten Indians, including a 
number of Logan's relatives, all of whom had crossed 
the Ohio to get liquor, were massacred while drunk, 
and it was generally believed that Cresap had done this 
base deed. As a matter of fact, the murders were com- 
mitted by one Greathouse and a party of twenty men. 
On the wings of the forest-telegraph news of the foul 
murder reached Croghan and Sir William Johnson, by 
whom it was reported to London as an act certain to 
bring on an Indian war. 1 

the court held that individuals had no rights of purchase from Ind- 
ians. It is not strange that Lord Dunmore should have succumbed to 
t lie then prevailing disease of land speculation. 

1 Colonel Cresap the elder came to Maryland from Yorkshire when 

188 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

The frontier was now in an uproar. From village to 
village throughout the Northwest coursed the fleet run- 
ners calling to the war-path. At the instigation of the 
Pennsylvania traders that colony held itself neutral, put- 
ting upon Virginia the onerous task of meeting the hos- 
tility of the savages. Leaving the rebellious house of 
burgesses to what he considered their treasonable de- 
vices, Lord Dunmore placed himself at the head of the 
popular backwoods movement to chastise the savages 
who were now devastating the frontier, Logan himself 
taking frequent and terrible revenge for the treacher- 
ous murder of his relatives. 1 

Lord Dunmore's plan of campaign was for the army 
to gather in two divisions: he himself, commanding the 
right wing, was to proceed by the way of Pittsburg to 

fifteen years old. After many financial vicissitudes and much hard 
fighting he became a comparatively wealthy man with a large prop- 
erty on the Potomac. At the age of seventy he visited England; at 
eighty be married for the last time; at ninety be planned to explore the 
country to the Pacific, but was forced by failing powers to give up 
the undertaking, and he died at the ripe age of one hundred and six 
years. His son, Captain Michael Cresap, had been brought up to 
fight Indians; he had thrown away the advantages of education, and, 
after financial troubles, entered the Ohio country early in 1774. At 
this time he was working about fifteen miles above the Kanawha, 
and was called upon to lead the frontiersmen whom Dr. Conolly's 
summons had aroused. It appears that he advised against the attack 
on Logan's camp, and that while not differing from his companions in 
his general hostility to Indians, he was above the treachery of mur- 
dering drunken savages. 

1 On July 21, 1774, Logan addressed to Captain Cresap a letter 
asking why the latter had slain Logan's people on the Yellow Creek, 
and boasting that he had been three times to war since. This letter, 
written in gunpowder ink by a captive, was dictated by Logan ; it 
was attached to a war -club and left at the house of the murdered 
Roberts family, whence it was taken to Colonel Preston, whose grand- 
daughter married Hon. Thomas H. Benton. — Brantz Mayer's Logan 
and Cresap, p. 111. 

189 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

the banks of the Kanawha, there to join the left wing 
under General Andrew Lewis. On the great levels of 
the Greenbrier General Lewis gathered his array of 
stalwart and experienced Indian fighters — men from 
the back counties of Virginia and from the Watauga 
commonwealth, then perforce an independent state 
under the leadership of Sevier and Robertson. On 
October 10th, while this army of about eleven hundred 
men was in camp at Point Pleasant, with the Kanawha 
at the rear and the Ohio on the left, it was suddenly 
attacked by a large force of Indians led by the Shawa- 
nese chief Cornstalk ; and in the desperate all-day battle 
that ensued one-fifth of the whites were either killed or 
wounded, while the Indians withdrew with a loss of about 
forty killed. Both in discipline and in valor the Indians 
were at least the equals of the whites ; in numbers the 
two forces were about the same; but there is always a 
point where the Indians will give up the hope of ulti- 
mate success rather than suffer the loss of their com- 
rades, and so it was that in the battle of Point Pleasant 
the savages withdrew, although they had suffered the 
smaller loss. 1 

Eager to follow up his dearly bought victory, Lewis 
crossed the Ohio and marched his army to the Picka- 
way Plains, whither he had been summoned by Lord 
Dunmore. As the two armies approached, General 
Lewis was ordered into camp to await the conclusion 
of a peace that the reluctant Cornstalk was forced to 
make when his burning exhortations to battle fell upon 
the ears of his disheartened braves like sparks upon the 
water. The great chief Logan refused to enter the 

1 For an account of the battle, see American Archives, fourth series, 
vol. i., p. 1016 et seq. The best account of the Dumnore expedition is 
to be found in Whittlesey's Fugitive Essays (Hudson, Ohio, 1852). 

190 



ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

council ; and when Lord Dunmore summoned him he 
sent this reply, which has taken a place in our litera- 
ture as the greatest of Indian prose elegies : 

" I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered 
Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him not meat, if 
ever he came cold and naked and he clothed him not. 
During the course of the last long and bloody war, 
Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. 
Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen 
pointed as they passed and said, ' Logan is the friend of 
white men.' I had even thought to have lived with 
you, but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, 
last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered 
all the relations of Logan, not even sparing my women 
and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the 
veins of any living creature. This called on me for re- 
venge. I have sought it. I have killed many. I have 
fully glutted my vengeance. For my country I rejoice 
at the beams of peace ; but do not harbor a thought that 
mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will 
not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to 
mourn for Logan? Not one!" 1 

1 There are many versions of this message. The one above is taken 
from Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia (London, 1787), p. 105. 
Jefferson says of it : "I may challenge the whole orations of Demos- 
thenes and Cicero, and of any more eminent orator, if Europe has fur- 
nished more eminent, to produce a single passage superior to the 
messages of Logan, a Mingo chief, to Lord Dunmore." He also speaks 
of " Colonel Cresap, a man infamous for the many murders committed 
on those much-injured people." Jefferson never wholly retracted this 
slander on Captain Cresap, although he had full opportunity of know- 
ing that Cresap was not within fifty miles of the place of the murder 
at the time when it was committed. The soldiers of Dunmore's army 
knew that Cresap was unjustly charged with the murder, and, when 
the message was read to them at the treaty, George Rogers Clark, who 
was in Cresap's party at Wheeling, joked him about being so impor- 

191 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Cornstalk and Logan assented to the peace deter- 
mined upon, according to the Indian custom, by a 
majority of the council ; and Lord Dunmore marched 
back to Virginia to receive the applause and honor 
inner withheld from a conqueror. If General Lewis 
and his brave officers suspected that Lord Dunmore 
had left them to their fate at Point Pleasant, that 
he was over-eager to make peace when chastisement 
would have produced better results, and was anxious to 
claim credit for success achieved only through their vic- 

tant an Indian fighter as to be credited with all the attacks on the 
savages. Not only was Cresap iuuocent of the murder, but, as a 
matter of fact, Logan had a number of relatives (he had no children 
b}' his wife) remaining after the massacre. Moreover, the language 
on which the message — it was not a speech — depends for its rhetor- 
ical effect was not Logan's, but Colonel John Gibson's, and he in turn 
in part paraphrased the Bible and in part adopted the biblical style. 
Gibson, as it appears, received Logan's message from Simon Girty, 
who had been sent to find Logan. Girty translated it into English, 
and Gibson put it into its present shape. It is idle, therefore, to 
regard the production as a specimen of Indian eloquence ; but the 
message as given to Lord Duumore made a decided impression at the 
time, and Jefferson fixed it among classics. Both Logan and Jeffer- 
son spoke of " Colonel" Cresap. Colonel Cresap was the father ; the 
son was a captain then and until his death. — See "Whittlesey's Fugitive 
Essays, p. 143, and Butterfield's History of the Girtys, p. 29. 

Logan was a son of the chief Skikellamy, who lived at Shamokin, 
on the Susquehanna. Perhaps the father was a Frenchman who had 
been transformed into an Indian. Logan was named for his lather's 
friend, James Logan, at one time Secretary of the colony of Pennsyl- 
vania. Although not technically a chief, he was uot without follow- 
ers ; his father was of the Iroquois, but Logan married a Shawanese. 
During the Revolution he was actively employed by the British until 
aboul 1780, when he was killed in self-defence by a relative. Having 
become a victim of the Englishman's rum, he struck his wife while at 
Detroit, and escaped into the forest lest he should be killed by her 
people. Meeting one of his relatives while in a crazy condition, 
Logan attacked him and w r as shot. — See Brantz Mayer's Logan and 
Cresap. 

193 




simon KENTON 
(From a paiutiug by Robert Clarke, Cincinnati, Ohio) 



, ENGLAND TAKES POSSESSION 

tory, nevertheless they joined with the army in thank- 
ing Lord Dunmore for his leadership in the expedition. 
Perhaps, however, the vote of thanks passed by the as- 
sembly of officers, held when they reached Fort Gower, 
at the mouth of the Hocking, was intended to take 
the personal sting out of the remaining resolutions, 
wherein the backwoods Yirginians proclaimed that, al- 
though bearing faithful allegiance to George III., they 
were resolved to exert every power within them ' k for the 
defence of American liberty, and for the support of her 
just rights and privileges, not in any precipitous, riot- 
ous, or tumultuous manner, but when regularly called 
forth by the unanimous voice of our countrymen." 
Thus at the very beginning of the struggle for inde- 
pendence the men of the frontiers, gathered on the soil 
of the Northwest, pledged the new lands to freedom. 1 

During the following year Captain Cresap raised a 
company of backwoodsmen and marched with them 
over the Alleghanies to join Washington at Cambridge. 
His own strength, however, was insufficient for the 
great struggle, and after a brief stay with the army 
he turned his face westward only to die when he had 
reached New York. He was buried with military 
honors in Trinity church-yard. 

Not alone through the eight long and bitter years of 
the Kevolution, but through the forty years that were 
to come before England finally relinquished her grasp 
on the territory between the Ohio and the Great Lakes, 
the pledge made on the banks of the Hocking was 
held good by the pioneers of Kentucky and their de- 
scendants. Boone and Kenton, Clark and Shelby, 



1 The resolutions are given in full in Whittlesey's Fugitive Essays, 
p. 152. 

N 193 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Lewis and Gibson — these are the names borne by mak- 
ers and preservers of the Northwest. The Dunmore 
war, so far from being a mere episode of the border, 
conquered the peace that opened Kentucky to settle- 
ment ; and Kentucky in its turn not only made an 
impassable frontier barrier to protect the rear of the 
colonies during the Revolution, but also furnished the 
men and the leaders who subdued the savages of the 
Northwest, and finally broke the power of the British 
at the battle of the Thames in the War of 1812. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

The British policy of maintaining the Northwest as an 
Indian hunting-ground was a failure. To the colonies 
the fertile lands along the Ohio were a temptation to be 
disposed of only by yielding to it; and the Indians had 
no power to protect their possessions when once the 
settlers had learned to fight after the fashion of the 
savages. Indeed, both in woodcraft and in ambush, 
the whites became more expert than the Indians them- 
selves; in endurance the backwoodsman was not ex- 
celled, and he was vastly superior to his red enemy 
in self-control and persistency of purpose. Moreover, 
even such law-abiding subjects as Washington never 
took seriously the proclamation of 1763, as prohibit- 
ing settlements beyond the mountains ;' but steadfastly 
maintained that the Ohio country was within the char- 
tered limits of Virginia. Also the impossibility of con- 
trolling the Northwest by means of scattered military 
posts and without laws or courts soon became apparent." 
Added to this was the signal failure of the proclama- 
tion of 1763 as a mea'ns of dealing with the many and 
perplexing questions that arose in the province of Quebec. 

1 Secret Journals of Congress (Boston, 1821), vol. iii., p. 153 et seq. 

8 Virginia held courts beyond the Alleghanies in 1773; but there 
was no regular government southwest of Fort Pitt ; and Conolly's 
courts were scarcely to be classed as such (see Secret Journals of Con- 
gress, vol. iii., p. 187). 

195 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

The ebbing tide of war left in control at Quebec Gen- 
eral James Murray, who was styled in his commission 
" captain-general and governor-in-chief" of the province. 1 
The most extensive powers were conferred upon him 
and his council; but no assembly was provided for, 
though a promise of self-government at some future 
time was made in the proclamation of 1763. The car- 
dinal difficulty experienced in government arose from 
the attempt to give English laws to a people unac- 
quainted with trial by jury or the habeas corpus. Gen- 
eral Murray, although a distinguished soldier at the 
siege of Quebec, was not a successful administrator; 
and after two years of weary life in the new govern- 
ment he gave place to one of his fellow-generals, Guy 
Carleton, on whom was conferred the larger title of 
governor of Canada. 2 

In a letter to Lord Hillsborough, written in 1770, 
Carleton called attention to the fact that the Protes- 
tants who had settled, or rather sojourned, in Quebec 
since the conquest, were traders, disbanded soldiers, and 
officers below the rank of captain. Of those who would 
naturally be called on to administer justice, the ones who 
were successful in business had no time to act as judges; 
while those whose ill success resulted in bankruptcy 
naturalh" sought to repair their broken fortunes at the 
expense of the people. Hence arose a variety of schemes 
to increase their business, and consequently their fees ; 
bailiffs of their own creation — mostly French soldiers, 
either disbanded or deserters — were dispersed through 
the parishes with blank citations, to catch at every little 

1 Murray's commission is given in full in American Archives, 4th 
series, vol. i., p. 175. 

a Murray was the fifth sou of the fourth Lord Elibank, and, after 
leaving Canada, was made governor of Minorca. He died in 1794. 

196 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

feud among the people and force them to litigate quar- 
rels which, had the people been left to themselves, might 
easily have been accommodated. In order to put a stop 
to such abuses, Carleton reduced the power of the jus- 
tices of the peace, in part revived the old laws of Can- 
ada, and arranged to have matters relating to property 
decided by king's judges paid by the crown. 1 

This action was taken after a careful examination of 
the entire question by a committee of five, headed by 
Chief -justice Hey and Lieutenant-governor Cramahe. 
The committee reported that the authority and powers 
of the justices of the peace in matters of property, as 
contained in the ordinance of 176Jr, were very injudi- 
cious. Even in England, where the justices of the 
peace were, for the most part, men of large fortunes, 
who had a considerable interest in common with the 
people over whom their authority was exercised, the jus- 
tices had no such extensive powers as in Canada ; and 
yet in Canada the justices had even usurped authority 
not given to them in their commissions; so that titles to 
land had been determined and possessions disturbed in 
a way unknown to the laws of England. Moreover, in 
the absence of any manner of ascertaining how their 
judgments were to be enforced, the magistrates had as- 
sumed authority in such a way as to fill the jails with 
numbers of unhappy subjects whose families were re- 
duced to beggary and ruin. It had become a common 
practice to take lands in execution and sell them to sat- 
isfy even a small debt. The very powers originally cal- 
culated for the ease of the suitor and to facilitate the 
courts of justice had become the very instrument of his 



1 " Carleton to Hillsborough," and also "Letter from an ex-Captain 
of Militia," Canadian Archives, 1890, pp. 1-5. 

197 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

oppression and ruin. In one instance the expense of 
suing for a debt of eleven livres amounted to eigh- 
ty-four livres. The ordinance prepared to make the 
changes indicated above was approved by the king, 
who, wrote Lord Hillsborough, " wishes that every just 
ground of discontent should be removed, and every 
real grievance remedied as far as may be." 

As was to be expected, the justices rebelled against 
this diminution of their authority; but Carleton warned 
them that they were acting against their own interests. 
In this ordinance is to be found, in part, the basis for 
the Quebec act in 1774. 

The Quebec act was so obnoxious to the American 
colonists that it was cited in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence as " abolishing the free system of English 
laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein 
an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries 
so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument 
for introducing the same arbitral rule into these colo- 
nies." Taken as one of the many measures by which 
the ministers of George III. sought to curb and repress 
the colonies, the Quebec act was unwise and impolitic. 
Viewed from the stand-point of a quiet administration 
of England's new territories, it was so successful that 
during the Revolution the Americans failed in all their 
efforts to detach the Canadians generally from their al- 
legiance to the British. In Parliament, however, the 
bill met with vigorous but ineffectual opposition, both 
from the friends of the colonists and also from the Brit- 
ish merchants doing business in Canada. 

The bill, brought up in the House of Lords by the 
Earl of Dartmouth, on May 2, 1774, passed without op- 
position fifteen days later. On June 18 it was returned 
to the House of Lords with amendments introduced by 

198 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

the House of Commons. At this stage it was opposed 
by the Earl of Chatham, who threw into his opposition 
all the energy which his seriously enfeebled condition 
allowed him to give to a measure that seemed to him a 
" cruel, oppressive, and odious " means of governing a 
realm that under his rule had been conquered by British 
arms and dedicated to the widest freedom then known 
to mankind. In prophetic words he described the bill 
as " destructive of that liberty which ought to be the 
groundwork of every constitution," and as " calculated 
to shake the affections and confidence of his Majesty's 
subjects in England and Ireland, and finally lose him 
the hearts of all Americans." ' 

In the House of Commons the ministry defended and 
explained the bill as one calculated to do only simple 
justice to a people conquered indeed, but still alien to 
the laws, the language, and the customs of their con- 
querors ; a people as yet too ignorant to appreciate and 
to take advantage of the freedom that was to an Eng- 
lishman as the very air he breathed. They explained 
that the bill was drawn by the Earl of Dartmouth, sec- 
retary of state for the colonies, 2 with the advice of the 
then governor of Quebec, Sir Guy Carleton, and of the 
chief-justice of that colony, "William Hey, both of whom 
must be credited with unusual ability, with a wide prac- 
tical experience in the affairs of Canada, and with a sin- 
cere desire to promote the well-being of the vast major- 
ity of the people of that country. 

The bill provided for a governor and council ; the 
criminal laws of England were continued in force 
throughout the colony of Quebec, but all civil causes 
were to be determined according to the custom of 

1 Cavendish's Report, p. 4. 

2 Cavendish's Report. Speech of Lord North, p. 8. 

199 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Paris; the Roman Catholic religion was established 
by continuing the stipends of bishops and clergy ; and 
the boundaries of the colony were enlarged by in- 
cluding the Labrador coast and the country north of 
the Ohio. 

In defending the bill, Lord North, then the leader of 
the ministry, explained that the value of the Labrador 
fisheries, but recently discovered, made it absolutely 
necessary, for the preservation of those fisheries, to 
detach the country from New York and to attach it 
to Quebec. The scattered posts in the Northwest were 
annexed to Canada because the traders demanded some 
government for them, and a single government was pref- 
erable to several separate governments. If the bill did 
extend the ancient limits of Canada, as had been charged, 
" the country to which it is extended is the habitation of 
bears and beavers; and all these regulations, which only 
pretend to protect the trader, as far as they can protect 
him, undoubtedly cannot be considered oppressive to 
any of the inhabitants in that part of the world, who 
are very few, except about the coast, and at present in 
a very disorderly and ungovernable condition." An 
assembly, Lord North argued, could not be granted, 
because, the bulk of inhabitants being Roman Catho- 
lics, an assembly of Roman Catholics would be a hard- 
ship to the few British subjects, while, on the other 
hand, an assembly confined to the English would prove 
oppressive to the Roman Catholics. Before the con- 
quest France had ruled the country by means of a 
governor and council ; now the English proposed to 
do the same. The English civil law might be better 
than the French, but property in Canada had become 
established under French law, and it was but fair that, 
inasmuch as the treaty of 1763 established the Canadi- 

200 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

ans in their possessions, they should be maintained in 
those possessions by the law under which they were 
created, subject to such changes as the governor and 
council might find necessary. As for the establishment 
of the Roman Catholic religion, the Act of Supremacy 
expressly guarded against papal authority ; and the free 
exercise of their religion was guaranteed to the Canadi- 
ans by the treaty of 1763. ' 

The brave Colonel Barre, who had shed his blood on 
the Plains of Abraham, resented the sneers of Lord 
North. The Northwestern country, he said, so far 
from being given up to bears and beavers, already con- 
tained the houses of man}' thousands of English sub- 
jects who had crossed the Alleghanies, as they had a 
right to do, to make settlements. 2 By making the St. 
Lawrence and the Great Lakes the boundary of Canada, 
as it was made in the peace negotiations with France 
in 1763, the scattered posts in the neighborhood of De- 
troit and Lake Michigan could be included, and thus the 
Ohio be left open to settlement. The youthful orator, 
Charles Fox, 3 who had ceased to be a Lord of the Treas- 
ury but fourteen days previous to the debate, opposed 
the right of the Eoman Catholic clergy to receive tithes 
as to his mind a fatal objection to the bill. 

1 Cavendish's Report, p. 12. The treaty provided "that every 
Canadian should have the full enjoyment of all his propert}', par- 
ticularly the religious orders of the Canadians, and that the free ex- 
ercise of the Roman Catholic religion should be continued." — Speech 
of Edward Thurlow, Attorney-general, Cavendish's Report, p. 28. 

a Colonel Isaac Barre, member for Wycombe, is represented in 
West's picture of the death of Wolfe as one of the group of officers 
standing near the dying general. He was severely wounded in the 
engagement on the Plains of Abraham. 

3 At this time Fox was just twenty-five years old, and had already 
been a member of the House for six years. 

201 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Edmund Burke ' opposed the bill on the ground that 
the boundaries came within those of the colony of New 
York, and also because the House was without sufficient 
information as to the condition of affairs in Canada; 
and he succeeded in having the bill amended so as to 
secure to the colony of New York substantially the 
\kxt& same western boundaries that the State now enjoys. 

Thomas Penn, the son, and John Penn, the grand- 
son, of "William Penn, by petition protested that their 
rights as proprietors were affected adversely by the 
boundaries; and the British merchants trading in Can- 
ada objected to the provisions doing away with trial by 
jury in civil cases, and subjecting their property to 
Canadian laws contained in some thirty volumes and 
administered by judges ignorant of those laws. 

At this juncture General Carleton, having been called 
before the House, testified, as to the result of four years 
of experience in the governorship, 3 that the Canadians 
objected to the expense of trial by jury and to the fact 
that trials were conducted in a language they did not 
understand. They thought it " very strange that the 
English residing in Canada should prefer to have mat- 
ters of law decided by tailors and shoemakers, mixed 
up with respectable gentlemen in trade and commerce ; 
that they should prefer their decision to that of a 
judge." 3 In 1770, he said, there w r ere in Canada 

1 Burke was a member for Wendover, and also agent for the colony 
of New York in England. 

2 Carleton had been in office four years when, in 1770, he was called 
to London to assist in drafting the Quebec Bill. During the four 
years of his abseuce the government was administered by II. T. 
Cramahe, Lieutenant-governor. See Canadian Archives, 1890, p. 12. 

3 Cavendish's Report, p. 102. Carleton's testimony in an abridged 
form is found in the Parliamentary Debates for 1774, and in American 
Archives, 4th series, vol. i., p. 190. 

000 




EDMUND HURKE 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

about 360 men who claimed to be Protestants ; whereas 
the number of Roman Catholics was about 150,000 
souls. The clergy had continued to receive their tithes 
and parochial dues as under the French ; but from mo- 
tives of policy such tithes and dues had not been en- 
forced against the few English land-owners. 

When asked by Lord North whether the Canadians 
desired assemblies, Governor Carleton promptly an- 
swered : " Certainly not. I put the question to several 
of the Canadians. They told me assemblies had drawn 
upon other colonies so much distress, had occasioned 
such riots and confusion, that they wished never to 
have one of any kind whatever." This answer, which 
was entirely consistent with the Canadian tempera- 
ment, also throws a strong light on the determina- 
tion of the ministry not to raise up in Canada another 
seditious colony by granting an assembly. When it 
came to the question of wider boundaries, General Carle- 
ton spoke with reluctance born of ignorance. The Ohio 
country, he said, was not included within the govern- 
ment of Quebec ; Detroit was not under the govern- 
ment, but Michigan was ; he thought that the Illi- 
nois country was a part of Old Canada, and that New 
Orleans was under the government of Quebec, but pre- 
cisely where the district ended he really did not know, 
nor did he know how far the Illinois was from Quebec. 
The difficulties with the narrow boundaries of Quebec 
named in the proclamation of 1763 were practical ones. 
Both the Canadian and the English traders complained 
that they were obliged to send their property to posts 
where there were no courts of justice, and even their 
grants of land were without the protection of law ; as a 
result the Upper Country was the asylum for vagabonds. 
He admitted that the Indians might object to the new 

203 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

boundaries ; for he said, " there are a great many tribes 
of Indians who think that neither we, nor France, nor 
any European power, have any title to the country; nor 
do they acknowledge themselves to be our subjects ; " 
but the Indians look upon their hunting-grounds as free. 

On June 22, 1774, four days after the Quebec bill 
passed the House of Commons, the Lord Mayor of 
London, together with several aldermen and upwards 
of one hundred and fifty of the common council, ap- 
peared at St. James Palace with an address and peti- 
tion to the king, supplicating his Majesty to refuse his 
assent to the bill. The king replied through the lord 
chamberlain that the bill was not yet before him ; and 
thereupon proceeded to Westminster to prorogue Par- 
liament, going first to the House of Lords, where he 
gave his assent to the bill, saying that it was " founded 
on the clearest principles of justice and humanity, and 
would, he doubted not, have the best effect in quieting 
the minds and promoting the happiness of his Canadian 
subjects." ' 

Governor Carleton returned to Quebec, September 18, 
1774, to find the Canadians well disposed towards the 
new act ; 2 but the British subjects were indignant at being 
deprived of " the franchises which they inherited from 
their forefathers," at their loss of the protection of Eng- 
lish laws, " so universally admired for their wisdom and 
lenity," and at the introduction of the laws of Canada, 
to which they were total strangers. 3 But in spite of 
petitions and motions to repeal the act, it went into 
operation and continued in force until 1791, when a 
new government was given to Quebec, and Canada 
was divided into Upper and Lower Canada. 

1 Cavendish's Report, p. 4. 2 Canadian Archives, 1890, p. 14. 

3 Petition of the English settlers. See Cavendish's Report, p. 14. 

204 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

From the Quebec act dates the beginning of civil 
government in the Northwest. 1 Under the provisions 
of the act Detroit was made the capital of the territory 
northwest of the Ohio, and civil officers were selected 
according to the spoils system, then at its height in 
England. 

Henry Hamilton, by the grace of King George the 
Third and the favor of the Earl of Dartmouth, lieuten- 
ant-governor and superintendent at Detroit, reached his 
new station on the 9th of November, 1775. His jour- 
ney was not without the spice of adventure. At Cam- 
bridge Washington was in command of the American 
army, and General Montgomery's little force patrolled 
the waters and the paths leading to the island-city of 
Montreal, that was soon (November 13th) to yield a tem- 
porary conquest. Through these ineffectual lines Ham- 
ilton passed in the disguise of a Canadian. The Ameri- 
cans, having come to Canada not so much to conquer 
the province as to make an offer of freedom to the 
Canadians, had j^et to learn that the dwellers along 
the St. Lawrence were well satisfied to endure the ills 
they had, rather than ally themselves with a heretic 
people turbulent for liberty. 2 ' After four days of travel 

1 The Quebec act is given in full in American Archives, 4th series, 
vol. i., p. 216 etseg. 

2 On April 2, 1776, Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll, 
of Carrollton, commissioners, accompanied by Rev. John Carroll, S. 
J. (afterwards the first Roman Catholic Archbishop of the United 
States), left Albany "to promote or to form a union between the col- 
onies and the people of Canada." The complete failure of their mis- 
sion is to be attributed maiuly to the fact that under the Quebec act 
the Canadians had been left tree in the exercise of the Roman Catho- 
lic religion, and to a large degree that religion "was established"; 
whereas Congress, in their address to the people of Great Britain 
(October 21, 1774), could not " suppress astonishment that a British 
Parliament should ever consent to establish in that country (Canada) 

205 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

in a wooden canoe, and " unprovided with everything,'' 
he reached a point of safety, and thereafter travelled in 
a manner more befitting an officer of the king. Once 
in Detroit, however, all perils were forgotten in contem- 
plating the charms of the place. The kindly fruits of 
the earth abounded ; the woods were full of blossoming 
shrubs, wild flowers, and aromatic herbs ; and no other 
climate he had ever known was so agreeable. The 
shingled houses of the settlers, each backed b} 7 a boun- 
teous orchard and flanked by barns and stables making 
a continuous row, smiled a welcome to the traveller as 
he sailed up the brimming river. From the clear 
depths of the stream a few hours of amusement with 
the line would draw enough fish to furnish several fam- 
ilies ; and so fertile was the land that even the careless 
and very ignorant French farmers raised great crops of 
wheat, corn, barley, and buckwheat. The whites num- 
bered about 1500 ;' and among them the law of the sur- 
vival of the fittest was already at work. The English 
settlers, more industrious and more enterprising than 

a religion that has deluged your island in blood, and dispersed im- 
piety, bigotry, persecution, and rebellion through every part of the 
world." Such an attack on the religion of a people could not be 
glossed over by the mild statement in the address of Congress to the 
inhabitants of Quebec, that " we are too well acquainted with the lib- 
erality of sentiment distinguishing your natiou, to imagine that differ- 
ence of religion will prejudice you against a hearty amity with us ." 
See American Archives, vol. v., p. 66; Journal of Charles Carrol! 
of Carrollton, with memoir by Brantz Mayer, Maryland Historical 
Society Publications, 1845 ; and Emily Mason's Charles Carroll of 
Carrollton. 

1 A survey of the settlement of Detroit in March, 1779, shows 1011 
men, 265 women, 253 "lodgers hired or young men," 484 boys, 402 
girls, 60 male slaves, and 78 female slaves; there were 413 oxen, 779 
cows, 619 steers, 1076 hogs, 664 horses, 313 sheep, and 141,000 
pounds of flour, besides wheat, Indian-corn, pease and oats in good 
quantity. — Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, 1886, p. 327. 

206 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

the French, were rapidly absorbing the traffic, were 
building vessels to navigate the lakes, and were stock- 
ing the farms with cattle, horses, and sheep. 1 

Yet all was not joy. The country was overrun by 
traders who made it their business to cheat the Indians 
by false weights and measures, by debasing the silver 
trinkets with copper, and by a thousand other artifices 
so persistently resorted to as to make the words trader 
and cheat synonymous, and thus to lead to disputes, 
quarrels, and murders. The Indians themselves were 
as the leaves blown by the autumn winds for number; 
and their thirst was as that of the ground parched by 
the August heats ; and although usually they did not 
steal from one another, yet they thought it no wrong 
to take from the whites what provisions they could lay 
their hands on. On arriving at Detroit an Indian hunt- 
ing party would trade perhaps a third of their peltries 
for fine clothes, ammunition, paint, tobacco, and like 
articles. Then a keg of brandy would be purchased, 
and a council held to decide who was to get drunk 
and who to keep sober. All arms and clubs were 
taken away and hidden, and the orgy would begin, 
all the Indians in the neighborhood being called in. 
It was the task of those who kept sober to prevent 
the drunken ones from killing one another, a task al- 
ways hazardous and frequently unsuccessful, sometimes 
as many as five being killed in a night. When the 
keg was empty, brandy was brought by the kettleful 
and ladled out with large wooden spoons ; and this 
was kept up until the last skin had been disposed of. 
Then, dejected, wounded, lamed, with their fine new 
shirts torn, their blankets burned, and with nothing but 

1 Hamilton to the Earl of Dartmouth. — Michigan Pioneer and His- 
torical Collections, 1886, p. 265. 

207 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

their ammunition and tobacco saved, they would start 
off down the river to hunt in the Ohio country, and 
begin again the same round of alternating toil and 
debauchery. 1 

Hamilton found the fort in a tolerable state of de- 
fence against either the savages or an enemy unpro- 
vided with cannon ; the new stockade of cedar, twelve 
hundred paces in extent and fifteen feet high, was forti- 
fied by eleven block-houses and batteries, and on two 
sides of the citadel was a protected ditch. Echoes from 
the conflict in the east came from time to time, in the 
shape of rumors that the Virginians were tampering 
with the savages ; but for a time at least Hamilton was 
able to carry matters with a high hand, promising to 
protect the whole Indian country from the inroads of 
the colonists. Not a few of the French were in sym- 
pathy with the Virginians* and some were secretly in 
communication with Fort Pitt. 2 Moreover, the Span- 
ish across the Mississippi were losing no opportunity 
to prejudice the Indians against the English; for by so 
doing they hoped to divert the fur-trade to their own 
posts. 3 

Such were the conditions when, one day in the latter 
part of August, 1776, an Englishman, a Delaware chief 

1 Colonel James Smith's Narrative, p. 83. 

2 " Jean Baptiste Chapoton (who had been captain of militia at 
Detroit), Bosseron the younger, and M. Le Gras are on the best pos- 
sible fooling with the rebels at Vincennes." — Hamilton to Cramahe, 
Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, 1883, p. 289. 

3 De Peyster to Carleton, June 17, 1777, Michigan Pioneer and 
Historical Collections, vol. x., p. 278; Hamilton to Carleton, March, 
1778, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, vol. ix., p. 432. At 
the Detroit council, on June 29, 1778, the Illinois Indians present 
begged Hamilton to believe that they were all as one man for the 
English. " Don't imagine," they said, "that although we go for rum 
to the Spaniards, they have our hearts !" 

208 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

known as Captain White Eyes, and an Indian educated 
in Virginia and called Moutons, had the insolence to 
appear at Detroit with a letter, a string, and a belt 
from the agent of the Virginian Congress, .soliciting 
the confederacy of Western Indians to go to a confer- 
ence at Pittsburg. Hamilton, angered by their audac- 
ity, tore their letter, cut their belts in the presence of 
the assembled savages, and sent them out of the settle- 
ment. The messengers, however, had brought with 
them a copy of the Pennsylvania Gazette of July 24, 
1776, containing the declaration of the colonies by 
which they entirely threw off all dependence on the 
mother -country. 1 In such fashion was the birth of 
the new nation announced at the capital of the North- 
west! 

On April 5, 1778, Charles Beaubien and young Lor- 
imer reached Detroit with a fine string of captives. 
Starting from the Miamis early in February, they easily 
prevailed upon fourscore Shawanese to accompany them 
on a raid up the Kentucky River, where they were so 
fortunate as to find Daniel Boone and twenty-six of his 
men making salt at the salt-lick near their fort. The 
Indians so completely surprised the settlers that, with- 
out the loss of a single man, they brought the party off ; 
but no inducement could lead the cautious savages to 
attempt the fort. To Hamilton, Boone told a pitiful 
story : because of the Indians the settlers had been un- 
able to sow grain, and by June there would be not a 
morsel of food in Kentucky ; clothing was not to be 
had; nor was relief to be expected from Congress. 

1 Hamilton to Lord Dartmouth, Michigan Pioneer and Historical 
Collections, 1886, p. 269. Hamilton made the mistake of one day in 
the date of the Gazette. There was no paper published on the 25th, 
Hamilton's date ; but the regular weekly issue appeared on the 24th. 
o 209 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

"Their dilemma," says Hamilton, "will probably in- 
duce them to trust to the savages, who have shown so 
much humanity to their prisoners, and come to this 
place before winter." ] 

Boone was about fort}^-four years old, had passed his 
life in the forest, and his bravery and knowledge of 
woodcraft endeared him to the Indians no less than to 
the pioneers, whose leader he was. Hamilton would 
have paid heavily for Boone's ransom, but the Indian 
family that had adopted him refused to give him up. a 
For five months he endured captivity ; but on learning 
that a large force was about to attack Boonsborough, 
he eluded his captors, and in five days travelled one 
hundred and sixty miles, having eaten but one meal 
during his entire journey. Happily his escape diverted 
the Indians from their purpose. 

In June, 1778, a grand council of Indians assembled on 
the banks of the broad Detroit. There were Chippewas 
from Saginaw Bay, Hurons from Sandusky, and Potta- 
watomies from St. Joseph ; there were Mohawks, Del- 

1 Hamilton to Carleton, April, 1778, Michigan Pioneer and Histor- 
ical Collections, vol. ix., p. 435. 

2 " On the 10th day of March following, land ten of my men were 
conducted by forty Indians to Detroit, where we arrived on the 30th 
day, and were treated by Governor Hamilton, the British commander 
of that post, with great humanity. During our travels, the Indians 
entertained me well ; and their affection for me was so great that they 
utterly refused to leave me there with the others, although the gov- 
ernor offered them £100 sterling for me, on purpose to give me a 
parole to go home. Several English gentlemen there, being sensible 
of my adverse fortune, and touched with human sympathy, generously 
offered me a friendly supply for my wants, which I refused, with many 
thanks for their kindness, adding that I never expected it would be 
in my power to recompense such unmerited generosity." — "Filson's 
Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon," in Imhiy's Topographical De- 
scription of the Western Territory (Loudon, 1797), p. 347. 

210 




GRAVE OF DANIEL BOONE 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

a wares, and Senecas, eager for rum and presents ; and 
there were the Ottawas and the Ilurons from the vil- 
lages across the river. To meet and greet them were 
Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton, who by this time had 
learned to dance the war-dance, to chant the war-song, 
and to handle the wampum-belts ; also Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor Edward Abbott from Vincennes, who, regarding 
discretion the better part of valor, had slipped away to 
Detroit, so that the Indians should not find him without 
a supply of presents when they returned from their 
winter hunt ; and the Indian agents Hay and McKee ; 
and Captain Lernoult and Lieutenant Caldwell, of the 
king's regiment stationed at Detroit ; and eight inter- 
preters, among whom was Simon Girty. Lately escaped 
from Fort Pitt, Girty and McKee were now just begin- 
ning their notorious career as partisans. 1 

During the period of more than a quarter of a cen- 
tury from the outbreak of the Revolution, the brothers 
Simon, James, and George Girty, together with Alex- 
ander McKee, played a part in the history of the 
Northwest far more important than did any British 
commander. In the estimation of the Americans, Si- 
mon Girty was the arch-fiend of the realms of savagery. 
There were many redeeming traits about McKee, with 
whom the somewhat fastidious De Peyster associated 
on terms of intimacy ; but the instances in which Simon 
Girty showed humanity served only by contrast to 
blacken an ingeniously diabolical career. The responsi- 
bility of the English commandants for border cruelties 
lies not so much in their personal acts as in their em- 
ployment of such agents to do their work. 



1 The minutes of the council are given in the Michigan Pioneer and 
Historical Collections, vol. ix., p. 442 et seq. 

211 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

The Girtys were sons of that Simon Girty who, com- 
ing from Ireland at some date before 1737, made his 
home on the banks of the Susquehanna, and engaged 
in Indian trade. Marrying Mary Newton at Fort Du- 
quesne, his second son, Simon, was born in 1741, James 
was born two } r ears later, and George in 1745. In 1751 
the elder Girty was killed in a drunken revel by an Ind- 
ian known as The Fish, who in turn was slain by John 
Turner, and as a reward the latter received the hand of 
the widow. In 1756, when the entire family were taken 
prisoners by the Indians and the French under Neyon 
de Villiere, Turner, as the slayer of The Fish, was put to 
death by torture, in the presence of his family. After 
repeatedly witnessing the most revolting cruelties prac- 
tised on prisoners, the family was separated, Simon 
being adopted by the Senecas, James by the Shawa- 
nese, and George by the Delawares ; but in 1759 they 
were reunited at the surrender of prisoners after the 
treaty of Easton. As opportunity offered, the Girt} 7 
boys put to use their understanding of Indian dialects, 
acting as interpreters, traders, or hunters, their head- 
quarters being at Pittsburg. Simon, finding Dr. Con- 
oily a congenial spirit, espoused Virginia's side of the 
boundary dispute, and was arrested on some charge, at 
the instance of Arthur St. Clair, the leader of the Penn- 
sylvanians. When Lord Dunmore reached Pittsburg 
he made Simon Girty one of his scouts, and Girty it 
was who received from Logan the celebrated message, 
as has been told. 

After the Dunmore war, Girty was a second lieuten- 
ant in Conolly's militia, until the outbreak of the Revo- 
lution drove both Dunmore and Conolly from the scene, 
restoring to Fort Pitt the name which the ambitious 
governor had attempted to exchange for his own. Con- 

2t2 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

o-ress having created an Indian department, Girty was 
employed as an interpreter by the agent, George Mor- 
gan, and in that capacity was doubtless present at the 
conference held at Fort Pitt, on July 6, 1775, when the 
Virginian commandant, Captain Neville, secured the 
promise of Mingoes, Delawares, and Shawanese that 
they would remain neutral, provided their rights, both 
to the sovereignty and to the lands of their country, 
were not invaded by either the Americans or the Brit- 
ish. 1 

For ill -behavior Girty lost his place as interpreter; 
but the Continental general, Edward Hand, on taking 
possession of Fort Pitt, early in 1777, commissioned him 
a second lieutenant and employed him actively among 
the Indians. Girty's loyalty was suspected, although 
his work was efficient; and in 1778 he fell under the in- 
fluence of Alexander McKee, who had been Sir William 
Johnson's deputy during the two years prior to the 
superintendent's death in 1774. McKee was a native 
of Pennsylvania, a trader of wealth and position ; but 
possibly because of his position as crown deputy, sus- 
picion attached to him, and he had been placed on 
parole by General Hand. Joined with McKee was 

' Pennsylvania Gazette, August 7, 1776. At this conference were 
present Kiashuta, a Mingo chief just returned from Niagara with 
belts from the Six Nations commanding neutrality ; Captain Pipe, a 
Delaware chief, whose career we shall follow ; The Shade, a Shawa- 
nese chief, and She-ge-na-ba, a son of Pontiac. The latter received 
from Morgan a fine gun, as a reward for having saved the life of a 
young man named Field, the son of Colonel John Field who was 
killed'at Point Pleasant. Pontiae's son alone of those present re- 
mained neutral, and refused to obey Hamilton's summons to the war- 
path. His home was at Fallen Timbers, the site of Wayne's victory. 
See letter from Lyman C. Draper in Parkman MSS., volume entitled 

French Documents. 

213 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

another Pennsylvania trader, Matthew Elliott, an Irish- 
man by birth, who was on such friendly terms with the 
Shawanese that they made him their messenger to Lord 
Dunmore when they sued for peace after their defeat 
at Point Pleasant. On the 2Sth of March, 177S, just 
as General Hand was about to send a force to arrest 
McKee, that worthy, together with Elliott, Girty, and 
a few others, escaped to Detroit. Doubtless they knew 
that a warm welcome would await them, for during the 
previous March Elliott had been captured and brought to 
Hamilton, who sent him to Quebec, whence he returned 
to Pittsburg on parole. Yet, however important these 
three men might consider themselves, even they could 
not have apprehended the consternation their desertion 
caused throughout the frontier regions, from the head- 
waters of the Alleghany even to the Mississippi; it 
would have been impossible for the British to have 
selected three more effective tools for the purposes of 
border warfare. 1 

The council having been opened with prayer, 2 Lieuten- 
ant-Governor Hamilton congratulated the assembled Ind- 
ians on their almost uniform success in their raids, on 
the number of their prisoners, and the far greater num- 
ber of scalps. He reminded them that they had driven 
the rebels to a great distance from the Indian hunting- 
grounds, and had forced them to the coast, where they 
had fallen into the hands of the king's troops ; he an- 



1 Butterfield's History of the Girtys (Cincinnati, 1890). This most 
painstaking work corrects innumerable errors in regard to the rene- 
gades of the Ohio ; and with conscientiousness Mr. Butterfield has 
not hesitated to contradict his own statements made in previous pub- 
lications. 

- "Having returned thanks to the Great Spirit. I must thank you 
all for having atteuded my call." began Hamilton 

314 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

nounced the recall of Carleton and the appointment of 
Ualdimand, " well known through that country as the 
chief warrior at New York, a brave officer, a wise man, 
esteemed by all who know him ;" he took from the Ind- 
ians the silvered medals given to them by the French, 
and hung about their necks those furnished by the Eng- 
lish ; and in the name of the king he put the axe into the 
hands of his Indian children, " in order to drive the reb- 
els from their land, while his ships-of-war and armies 
cleared them from the sea." . — 

To these exhortations the Indians made answer after 
their own fashion : they boasted their fortitude in with- 
standing the seductions of Virginians and Spanish; and 
with a diplomacy that is still current among nations, 
they promised on their return to refer the whole matter 
to their war -chiefs, "who know how to act in war." 
Forced to be satisfied with these equivocal answers, 
Hamilton covered the council-fire, and the council ad- 
journed to partake of one of those riotous feasts whose 
expense so wrung the heart of the economical Haldimand. 

The last canoe of the returning Indians had not dis- 
appeared behind Montreal Point before an express ar- 
rived from the Illinois country, saying that a party of 
rebels, in number about three hundred, having taken 
prisoner M. de Kocheblave, the commander at Fort 
Gage, had laid him in irons and had exacted from the 
inhabitants an oath of allegiance to the Congress. Also 
the express announced that a detachment had been sent 
to Cahokia ; and even as the messenger was leaving 
Kaskaskia " one Gibault, a French priest, had his horse 
ready saddled to go to St.Vincennes to receive the sub- 
mission of the inhabitants in the name of the rebels." ' 



1 Hamilton to Carleton, August 8, 1778. 
215 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

This was too much for Governor Hamilton's warlike 
spirit. He had been forced to yield to the tamer coun- 
cils of his superiors in opposition to his plan to reduce 
Fort Pitt;' but here was an insult that he could not 
brook. To have a band of rebels invade his own terri- 
tory, lay one of his commandants in irons and confine 
him in a pig-pen was too much for British blood. 

Leaving Detroit in the hurry and bustle of prepara- 
tion for an expedition to the Illinois country, we now 
turn our attention to the events leading up to Clark's 
capture of the posts on the Mississippi and the Wabash. 

The peace effected by Lord Dunmore, in 1774, once 
more had opened Kentucky to settlers, who began to 
flock to that region and to take up lands purchased 
from the Cherokees by Colonel Richard Henderson. 2 
The company set up courts, gave laws, organized a mili- 
tia—in short, erected the proprietary government of the 
colony of Transylvania. The commander of the mili- 
tia was George Rogers Clark, a bold and adventurous 
surveyor of twenty-two, who was born in Albemarle 
County, Virginia, two years before Braddock's defeat, 
and who had seen military service with the Dunmore 
expedition. The Kentuckians had outgrown the idea 
of quit-rents; the lands they cleared, cultivated, and 
defended were their lands in fee-simple; and when the 
company showed its power by attempting to raise rent- 
als, the people elected Clark and Gabriel John Jones 
members of the Assembly of Virginia. That body 
had adjourned before the new representatives com- 
pleted their hazardous journey through the moun- 
tains ; but Clark had a message for the new governor, 



1 " Haldimand to Hamilton," August 6, 1778. 
* By the treaty of Watauga, March, 1775. 
216 




GEORGE ROGERS CLARK 
(Photographed by L. Bergman. Louisville, Kentucky) 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION' 

"a certain Patrick Henry, of Hanover County," as 
Lord Dunmore contemptuously styled his successor. 1 
In one thing, at least, the two men agreed ; both the 
last governor of the king and the first governor of the 
people were bent on extending the authority of Vir- 
ginia throughout the lands included within her ancient 
boundaries. 

Henry being ill at his home, thither Clark bent his 
steps. Picture the scene : the ardent youth, with tall, 
well-knit frame and flashing eye, pacing up and down 
the sick -chamber of the no less ardent governor, and 
pouring forth a torrent of ambition, hope, and pathos — 
of ambition that his native commonwealth should win 
the glory and the gain of conquering the Northwest for 
Virginia ; of hope that the Virginians of the tide- water 
would not leave their brothers beyond the mountains 
to be cut off by prowling savages led by renegade 
whites ; and of pathos almost beyond words in the 
grim story of ambushed paths, of red demons lurking 
behind garden-bush or even behind fort-gate, ready with 
the brutal tomahawk to deal the swift blow, and disap- 
pear into the dark forest! The warm-hearted governor 
quickly espoused the cause of the Kentuckians, and the 
two men wrung from the reluctant council a large gift 
of powder for the protection of the frontiers. When 
the assembly convened, Clark and Jones were admitted, 
and before the session ended they succeeded in having 
created the county of Kentucky, thus putting an end 
to the Colony of Transylvania. This accomplished, 
they set off, by way of Fort Pitt, for the dark and 
bloody ground they had come to call home. 2 

' Moses Coit Tyler's Life of Patrick Henry, p. 189. 
2 Mann Butler's Kentucky, p. 39 et seq. Clark and Jones wore not 
allowed to vote. They accomplished the inclusion of the Kentucky 

217 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

On his return, Clark found that the natural hostility 
of the Indians had been increased both in intensity and 
in sagacity by the leadership of paid agents of England, 
and by the British presents that sent the savages to war 
and welcomed their return, scalp laden. He saw what 
was apparent to all his fellows: that so long as the 
British held Detroit, Kaskaskia, Vincennes, and the con- 
necting forts, so long would England be able to keep 
up an effective warfare along the rear of the colonies. 
He did what no one else thought of doing : he sent 
Moore and Dunn into the Illinois country as spies. 
Armed with their report he again presented himself be- 
fore Governor Henry, and on December 10, 1777, he 
laid before him a plan of conquest that should balance 
in the south the great northern victory of Saratoga, 
over which the whole country was rejoicing. Into their 
councils Governor Henry called George Wythe, George 
Mason, and Thomas Jefferson ; and b} r their influential 
aid Clark, without trouble, obtained two sets of orders — 
one public, ordering bim to defend Kentucky; the other 
secret, ordering an attack on the British post of Kas- 
: kaskia. Clothed with all the authority he could wish, 
with £1200 in depreciated paper, and an order on the 
commandant at Fort Pitt for ammunition and boats, 
Clark set forth to raise west of the mountains a force 
with which to conquer the Northwest. 

As fortune would have it, Clark, on his way down the 
Ohio, learned of the alliance between France and the 
colonies,; and this information was worth as much to 
him as a heavy reinforcement. From John Duff and a 
party of hunters whom he met near the mouth of the 



country notwithstanding the opposition of the president of the Tran- 
sylvania Company, Colonel Henderson. 

218 




PATRICK HENRY 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

Tennessee, Clark learned that M. Kocheblave had no ap- 
prehensions of an attack. Indeed, it was in the highest 
degree improbable that from the meagre settlements, 
separated as they were by three or four hundred miles 
from the nearest post of their friends at Fort Pitt, and 
by six hundred miles from the seat of government in 
Virginia, a force should issue against the strong British 
posts of the Illinois, placed in the midst of powerful 
Indian tribes hostile to the Americans. The very au- 
dacity of the plan secured success. Approaching Kas- 
kaskia on the evening of July 4, 1778, Clark sent a por- 
tion of his command across the river to the town, while 
he himself, at the head of a handful of troops, walked 
quietly in at the open postern gate of Fort Gage. Act- 
ing on those theatrical impulses which were a large part 
of his stock in trade, he completely terrified the inhabi- 
tants ; and then, having led them to expect another ex- 
pulsion like that of the Acadians, he assured them that 
Americans " disdained to make war on helpless inno- 
cence "; and that it was simply to protect their own wives 
and children that they had " penetrated to this strong- 
hold of British and Indian barbarity." When the people 
of Kaskaskia learned that neither their lives nor their 
property were at stake they joyfully set the church-bells 
ringing, and then even offered to go with Major Bow- 
man to inform their relatives and friends at Cahokia of 
the good tidings. There, too, the terror inspired by the 
unexpected coming of the terrible "Big Knives" was 
speedily turned into huzzas for freedom and for the 
Americans; and thus, without the shedding of a drop of 
blood, the Illinois country was conquered for Virginia. 
Vincennes now remained to be dealt with ; and here 
Clark was puzzled. His force was not sufficient to hold 
the towns he had taken, even with the help of his Span- 

219 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

ish friends across the Mississippi; and at any moment 
the Indians, led by the English, might cut him off from 
his base. At this juncture, Father Gibault, a priest 
whose parish extended from Lake Superior to the Ohio, 
offered to undertake to convert the people of the Wa- 
bash post to the American cause, a proposition readily 
accepted by Clark and faithfully carried out by this 
member of the church militant. Electing a command- 
ant, the people of O. Post (as Yincennes was commonly 
called) ran up over the fort the strange flag of the Vir- 
ginians, much to the surprise of the Indians, to whom 
explanation was made that their old father, the King 
of France, was come to life again, and that if they did 
not wish their land to run red with blood the}' must 
make peace with the Americans. Successful beyond 
his most sanguine expectations, Clark formed a French 
militia company at Kaskaskia; placed Captain Williams 
in command of the fort; continued Captain Bowman at 
Cahokia; sent Colonel William Linn to build at the 
Falls of the Ohio the fort that has developed into the 
city of Louisville; and announced his conquest to Vir- 
ginia, accompanying his message with the vituperative 
captive Kocheblave, as an evidence of good faith. In 
October, 1778, Virginia acknowledged her responsibility 
in the matter by establishing the County of Illinois, em- 
bracing all the chartered limits of the colony west of the 
Ohio River. Colonel John Todd was made lieutenant- 
colonel of the county, and American civil government 
began in that region. 1 

1 William Haydeu English's Conquest of the Country Northwest of 
the River Ohio. Governor English's volumes are a perfect storehouse 
of information concerning Clark and his associates. It is necessary, 
however, to verify his statements, because of the great discrepancy in 
the accounts. A suggestive article is Carl E. Boyd's "County of 
Illinois," American Historical Review, July, 1899. 

220 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

We now turn northward to the Straits of Mackinac, 
the meeting-place of lakes Huron and Michigan, waters 
first traversed by Nicolet, and afterwards the scene of 
Marquette's labors in shepherding his Iroquois-clriven 
flock. From the last resting-place of the great ex- 
plorer one looks across waters burnished by the sum- 
mer sun, or in winter gazes along the pathway of the 
ice-breaking steamer, to the ever-shifting sands of Old 
Mackinaw, the scene of the massacre of 1763. There 
within a rude stockade were gathered the cabins of the 
most important fur-trading post possessed by the Brit- 
ish at the outbreak of the Kevolution. 

Thither Captain Arent Schuyler de Peyster of the 
Eighth, or King's regiment of foot, set out from Quebec 
in the May of 1774, with a commission not only to take 
command of the post, but also to enter upon the much 
more difficult task of superintending the Lake Indians, 
comprising sixteen or more tribes roaming forest and 
prairie on both sides of the Mississippi, from the Ohio even 
to the unknown regions north of Lake Superior. Born 
in the City of New York, on June 27, 1736, De Peys- 
ter's baptism was attended by his two uncles, Philip 
Van Cortlandt and Peter Schuyler and by his aunt, Eve 
Bayard, who there assumed those official responsibili- 
ties required to give a fitting start in the world to the 
scion of a family that traced its lineage far back of 
that Johannes de Peyster who came to New Amster- 
dam in 1633. As a second son, the youth was destined 
for the army, and was sent to England for his pre- 
liminary training. Entering the service in the year of 
Braddock's defeat, in 1768 he came with his regiment 
to Canada. Of commanding stature and soldier-like 
appearance, he possessed an affability of manner that 
endeared him to his fellow-officers, and also gave him 

221 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

an unusual control over the savages. Without being 
conspicuously great, he never failed to fill with real 
credit every position to which he was assigned. 

On his journey to the ends of civilization the young 
captain was accompanied by his wife, a daughter of 
Prevost Blair, of Dumfries, Scotland ; and their voj'age 
forms the theme of one of those poems of his, in which 
the entire absence of the poetic quality is atoned for by 
the abundance of interesting facts. Making the slow 
passage up the St. Lawrence in an open bateau, they 
crossed the Ontario in the ship-of-war named for the 
lake, and at Fort Erie they embarked on the sloop-of-war 
Dumnore, which carried them to their destination. For 
six years this devoted couple were the first English- 
speaking people to exemplify in the northern wilderness 
the blessings of a Christian home. 

On June 27, 1776, the Indians about Michilimacki- 
nac received through the medium of Father Matavit, 
the priest of the Two Mountains, strings of wampum 
from St. Lawrence River savages, who announced that 
Montreal was in possession of the Americans and asked 
aid, lest the Indians be driven quite out of Canada. On 
carrying the news to the commandant, they were told 
to look after their hunting until they heard from Sir 
Guy Carleton. A few days later an express came from 
the Six Nations, calling the Lake Indians to a council 
at Connesedaga; and when De Peyster found traders 
bearing passes signed by General Worcester and Ben- 
jamin Franklin, stipulating that they should furnish no 
supplies to the garrison, he set himself to the task of 
sending reinforcements to Montreal. 

On the day that the independence of the colonies was 
proclaimed at Philadelphia, De Peyster placed Charles 
de Langlade in charge of a force of savages and Cana- 

222 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

dian volunteers, with orders to report to the commander 
of the king's troops in the neighborhood of Montreal ; 
to annoy the rebels wherever he might meet them, and 
in everything to conduct himself with his usual pru- 
dence and moderation. 1 Montreal having been recov- 
ered, and the Indians not having gone prepared to spend 
the winter, Carleton gave them presents, and promptly 
sent them home, with orders to return in the spring if 
wanted. Langlade, however, remained below during the 
early winter, and returned north in February with an 
order to bring back two hundred chosen Indians for the 
Burgoyne expedition. The difficulty was not so much 
to obtain the necessary force as " to prevent the whole 
country from going down"; for the presents, the med- 
als, the gorgets, and especially the rum furnished by 
the British were to the eager Indians but a foretaste of 
the plunder in store for them when once they should 
take the war-path. Moreover, he was indeed a faint- 
hearted Indian who would not follow where Langlade 
led. 

For length and variety of service, and for successful 
leadership of Indians in war, America has never known 
the equal of Charles de Langlade. Langlade's great- 
grandfather, Pierre Mouet, landlord of Maras, and first 
known as Mouet de Maras, was born of a family located 
in Castel Sarraisin, in Basse Guyenne, France ; and in 
1668 he came to settle at Three Kivers, then a most in- 
fluential trading-post. * His eldest son, Pierre, like his 

•The correspondence between Carleton and Captain de Peyster 
is to be found partly in the "Haldimand Papers," printed in vol. x. 
of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections (1876) ; and partly 
in the appendix to Miscellanies by an Officer (Colonel Arent Schuyler de 
Peyster), by General J. Watts de Peyster (New York, 1888). I am in- 
debted to General de Peyster for his courtesy in furnishiug to me 
many documents aud pictures not otherwise available. 

223 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

father, was an ensign in the army; and also like his 
father, he had seven children. Of this family the sixth, 
Augustin, born in L703, was the first to bear the name 
of Sieur de Langlade. Entering the fur-trade, he made 
headquarters at Miohilimackinao, where he married the 
widow of Daniel Villeneuve, who was also the sister of 
the prinoipal chief of the Ottawas, a great warrior known 
as The Fork. In May, L 729, Charles Michel de Lang- 
lade was born and duly baptized. From the energetic 
and faithful missionary priest. Father Du Jaunay, young 
Langlade obtained the beginnings of an education in let- 
ters; and at an age before boys usually leave the nur- 
sery lie took his first lessons in Indian warfare. In 1734, 
when the French were seeking the aid of the Upper 
Fake savages in their war against the English traders 
north of the Ohio, The Fork, moved by a superstition 
not unknown even in these days, refused to take up the 
hatchet unless he were allowed to cany with him his 
live years old grandson, in the capacity of what now 
would be known as a mascot ; and the father, on being 
entreat t'd. sent his son upon the war-path with the in- 
junction never to dishonor a brave name. Never was 
paternal blessing better deserved or more carefully heed- 
ed; and the scalps brought back to adorn the wigwams 
of Miehilimackinac testified abundantly to the success 
of the expedition. The superstitious Indians came to 
look upon young Langlade as one on whom a great maui- 
tou smiled; and from that day his influence over the 
savages exceeded that of any of his fellows. 1 

1 Memoir of Charles dc Langlade, by Joseph rasse, of Ottawa. Cana 
da ; translated from the French by Mrs. Sarah Fairchild Dean ; Witt 

cousin Historical Society Reports, vol. vii., ISTO. This sketch is based 
on Lyman C. Draper's report of the narrative of Captain Grigon, also 
published in the very valuable Wisconsin Reports. 

■:■: i 



THE QUEBEC A.CT A N D THE REVOLUTION 

Langlade's exploits at Piqua and at Braddock's defeat 
have already been recorded. In 1757 Langlade had 
joined Montcalm, and, with his Lake Indians, was at 
the taking of Fort George, where his services were re- 
warded by Vaudreuil by the position of* second officer 
at Michilimackinac, under a brother of that Beaujeu 
who was killed at Fort Duquesne. In June, 1759, at 
the head of a numerous band of Indians, Langlade set 
out for Quebec, where his skill and craft suggested a 
plan of cutting off Wolfe. Had M. de Levis been quick 
enough to act upon the Canadian's suggestions, impor- 
tant results might have followed; but in those days 
fortune everywhere favored the English. With des- 
perate valor Langlade fought through the battle on the 
Plains of Abraham, calmly smoking his pipe during the 
pauses in the combat. Saddened by the death of two 
of his brothers, and mortified by what he called the 
cowardly surrender of Quebec, Langlade once more set 
his face northward ; but the next April he was again on 
hand (this time with the king's commission as a lieuten- 
ant; to fight, with the Chevalier de Levis, the last fight 
for French supremacy in America. It was a short-lived 
triumph, for English reinforcements put an end to the 
struggle; and on the 9th of September Langlade re- 
ceived from Vaudreuil the announcement of the sur- 
render of Montreal, coupled with the hope of a meeting 
in France. Langlade's interests, however, bade him stay 
in America; and before George Etherington, who came 
to Michilimackinac in 1761, as the first English com- 
mander, both Augustin and Charles de Langlade took 
the oath of allegiance. The Englishman, quick to ap- 
preciate the advantages of the powerful support of the 
Langlades, made Charles the Indian superintendent for 
Green Bay, and also commander of the militia — a trust 
p 225 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

that was never dishonored. The massacre at Michili- 
mackinac, in 1763, might have been averted had his 
warnings been heeded, but when they were not, he did 
all he could to save those who were not butchered in the 
first onslaught. 

The outbreak of the Revolution found Langlade as 
ready to serve England as he had been ready to serve 
France twenty-two years previous. Hence it happened 
that when De Peyster was called upon for a band of 
Lake Indians to accompany the Burgoyne expedition, 
he ordered the ox for the barbecue, opened the rum 
casks, and served out ammunition to the bloody Sioux, 
the Iroquois of the Northwest; to the Chippewas of 
Sault Ste. Marie, to the Sacs and Foxes of the Illinois ; 
to the Winnebagoes and Menominees of Wisconsin ; and 
to the Ottawas of Lower Michigan. As soon as the ice 
left the Straits of Mackinac in the spring of 1776, the 
flotilla started for Georgian Bay, with Langlade lead- 
ing the way. Down the rapids of the Ottawa shot the 
fleet canoes ; thence to the St. Lawrence, and to the 
present town of Whitehall. There the motley troop 
joined themselves to the St. Lawrence Indians under 
the command of Langlade's old friend, the Chevalier 
St. Luc la Corne, who had won fame in Abercrombie's 
disastrous fight at Ticonderoga, and had been spared in 
the battles about Quebec for that later service he was 
destined to render the Canadians in his capacity as legis- 
lative councillor. Bnrgo}me, ignominiously beaten at 
Saratoga, October 11-, 1777, was disposed to charge his 
failure to the lack of support given by the Canadians 
and Indians; and in a measure he was correct. The 
Canadians of the St. Lawrence, who had no heart in 
the struggle against the colonists, much preferred to 
stay quietly at home, and let England attend to her 

226 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION" 

own quarrel. As for the Indians, Burgoyne gave them 
to understand that he would allow neither scalps nor 
plunder; and in so doing he took away from the sav- 
ages all incentive to fight. Le Due summed up the 
matter in the sentence : " General Burgoyne is a brave 
man ; but he is as heavy as a German." 

In 1778 for the last time Langlade took up arms. 
Word had come to De Peyster that Hamilton was pre- 
paring for an expedition to recapture Vincennes, and re- 
inforcements were needed. The Indians, summoned to 
a council at l'Arbre Croche, sulked in their wigwams at 
Milwaukee, in spite of Pierre Queret's belts and De Vier- 
ville's entreaties ; and the powerful influence of the vet- 
eran leader himself was needed. Going from village to 
village, he built in each a lodge with an opening at 
either end. Then calling the Indians to a dog-feast, and 
tearing the quivering hearts from the animals, he affixed 
one to a stake set at each doorway. Passing around 
the lodge, at each door he tasted the dog-heart, chant- 
ing the war-song meanwhile. This appeal was too much 
even for the stolidity of the Indians ; they sprang to the 
dance, and next day took their way to l'Arbre Croche. 

We left the Lieutenant-Governor at Detroit busy with 
preparations for the expedition he had undertaken for 
the recovery of the Illinois country. There has been a 
disposition to blame Hamilton personally for acting with- 
out authority in his government of Detroit, in undertak- 
ing an important expedition without the express orders 
from his immediate superiors, and for barbarity in war- 
fare. A sufficient answer to these accusations is to be 
found in the fact that he undertook to carry out the 
plans and desires of those in power in London, and that 
everything he did met with their approval. Had he 
been endowed with more ability, or had he been pitted 

227 



THE NORTH WEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

against American leaders of ordinary capacity, he would 
have been justified amply by success, lie was the le- 
gitimate product of the then English system of favor- 
itism, and he was employed in supporting a cause bad 
in itself and entirely out of harmony with the natural 
trend of events, so that he simply suffered the common 
lot of British commanders in America. Nominally in 
absolute control at Detroit, Hamilton was hampered in 
the administration of justice by the fact that the sal- 
aries allowed for judges were too small to command the 
services of worthy men, and so he himself was forced to 
administer the law.' Moreover, the naval control of the 
Upper Lakes was committed to Colonel Bolton at Niag- 
ara, and the troops at Detroit were under the command 
of the senior military officer ; so that Hamilton, although 
bred in the army, was forced to ask rather than to com- 
mand the support of the naval and military forces. 
Again, although Sir Guy Carleton was nominally in con- 
trol of the entire region from Quebec to the Ohio, Lord 
George Germain issued directly from Whitehall the 
orders under which Lieutenant-Colonel Barry St. Leger 
dealt with the Six Nations, and by virtue of which also 
Hamilton called the Indian councils at Detroit, sent out 
parties of the savages against the frontiers of Virginia 
and Pennsylvania, and issued a proclamation inviting 
•• loyal subjects'" to join the king's forces, with an offer 
of pay and land bounties for so doing — a proclamation 

1 On September 7. 1778, Hamilton and Philip Dejean were indicted 
at Montreal for " divers unjust and illegal, Terrauical and felonious 
acts and things contrary to good Government aud the safety of His 
Majesty's Liege subjects." Haldimand sent the presentments to Lord 
Germain with the explanation that Hamilton's usurpation of author- 
ity was due to his difficult situation. Lord Germain was entirely sat- 
isfied. This correspondence and that relative to the naval command 
is to be found in the Haldimand Papers. 

328 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

that, when found upon the dead bodies of partisans, 
naturally embittered the Americans against the signer. 1 

Early in the October of 1778, all being in readiness 
for the start, Hamilton assembled his force of regulars, 
volunteers, and Indians, on the common at Detroit, not 
far from the Campus Martius, which was the centre of 
Detroit's stirring military life during the war of the 
Rebellion. From the mission across the river came 
Pere Potier, and the articles of war having been read 
and the oath of allegiance having been renewed, the 
venerable priest gave his blessing to the Catholics pres- 
ent, conditioned on their strict adherence to their oath. 
"The subsequent behavior of these people," significant- 
ly says Hamilton, "has occasioned my recalling this 
circumstance." 

The dreamy haze of Indian summer, blending low- 
reaching sky with autumn-tinted shore and opalescent 
water; the click of the oars in the thole-pins, borne far on 
the still air; the triangular flocks of ducks flying from 
one bed of wild -rice to another, preparatory to their 
winter migration ; the steady current of the island- 
strewn river, ready to speed the journey, all combined 
to make a propitious beginning. Before the flotilla had 
covered the eighteen miles of river, however, the wind, 
suddenly shifting to the north, brought down upon 
them a flurry of snow and fringed the reedy shores with 
thin ice. Rain and darkness were their portion as they 
made the traverse of Lake Erie to the Miami (now the 
Maumee), and landed on an oozy beach, where they spent 

1 See Lord George Germain's letter of instructions, March 26, 1777, 
in Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, vol. ix., p. 347. Copies 
of Hamilton's proclamation and the letter from the Detroit loyalists 
accompany Captain White Eyes' letter to Colonel Morgan, of March 
14, 1778.— State Department MSS. 

229 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

the night without tent or fire. "With no more than the 
ordinary difficulty, the force of one hundred and four- 
teen whites and about sixty Indians pursued their journey 
to the headwaters of the Wabash, down which stream 
they floated amid the running ice. Seventy-one days 
out from Detroit, as they were approaching Yincennes, 
Hamilton sent Major Hay in advance, and to him, on 
December 17th, Captain Helm surrendered his wretched 
fort, with its two iron three-pounders and a very limited 
stock of ammunition, its lockless gate, and its miserable 
barracks without even a well of water. The second 
surrender was like unto the first — not war, but a game 
of chess. 1 

Having won so easy a victory, Hamilton now con- 
sidered whether he should not go on to complete his 
work by the conquest of Kaskaskia and Cahokia; but 
the more he thought over the matter, the more con- 
vinced his moderate-sized mind became that his present 
situation was best. Animated by the spirit of a post- 
commander, he repaired the fort, called the fickle French 
to repentance, and sent off war- parties to waylay and 
murder the Virginians on the Ohio. Hamilton's force 
had been increased by accessions of Indians to five 
hundred persons, and he had not then the supplies req- 
uisite for a more extended campaign. Indeed, he was 
forced to send away some of his Indians to hunt. Again, 
the spring freshets were at hand, and by them Vin 
cennes would be cut off from the Illinois posts by miles 
of overflowed lands; and this should also prove a defence. 
Under ordinary circumstances, events would have justi- 
fied this reasoning; but unfortunately for him Hamilton 

1 Hamilton's account of his expedition from the time of leaving 
Detroit to his arrival in England is given iu the Michigan Pioneer and 
Historical Collections, vol. ix., p. 489 et seg. 

230 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

had now to deal with two men of most uncommon spirit 
and resolution. 

Of Clark's character we have already had a foretaste. 
Of Francis Vigo we have now to learn. Born a Sar- 
dinian, he early enlisted as a private in a Spanish regi- 
ment, and was sent to New Orleans. Procuring an 
honorable discharge, he engaged in the fur-trade on the 
Arkansas, and after St. Louis was founded he removed 
to that post and became a prosperous trader on the 
Missouri. "With a love of liberty that Spanish service 
could not efface, he went to Clark at Kaskaskia and 
made offer of his means and his influence to advance 
the cause of liberty. Clark gladly accepted, and quick- 
ly made use of Vigo's services, by sending him to Vin- 
cennes with supplies for Captain Helm. Accompanied 
by a single servant Vigo set out with a pack of goods, 
but on reaching the river Embarrass he was seized by Ind- 
ians, his goods were stolen, and, a prisoner, he was taken 
before Hamilton. 1 As a Spanish non-combatant Vigo 
was not subject to capture; and Hamilton, having some 
suspicions of his errand, was glad to part with him after 
exacting a promise that he would do nothing injurious 

1 During his years of affluence Vigo never claimed payment for his 
losses and never sought to collect a draft drawn by Clark on Oliver 
Pollock, agent for Virginia; but about 1802 Vigo was taken ill, and 
his affairs went badly. He then sought from the United States pay- 
ment for the last draft, amounting to about $8000. Much interesting 
history in regard to Vigo and Ihe Illinois campaign is to be found in 
House of Representatives Report, JSTo. 122, Twenty-third Congress, 
second session, and No. 513, Twenty -sixth Congress, first session. 
The former of these reports contains most complimentary letters on 
Vigo and his services, by George Rogers Clark, William Henry 
Harrison, Judge J. Burnett, General Anthony Wayne, and Secretary 
of War Knox. Vigo was a trader during Wayne's campaign of 1795, 
and performed services for that general akin to those performed for 
Clark. 

231 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

to British interests on his way to St. Louis. This 
promise Vigo kept to the letter. Departing down the 
Wabash, the same pirogue that took him to St. Louis 
returned with him to Kaskaskia, whore he laid before 
Clark the information that led to his great campaign.' 

Colonel Vigo's report having confirmed Clark in his 
belief that either he must capture Hamilton or else 
Hamilton would take him, he decided upon one of 
those desperate chances that in war almost invariably 
succeed. First equipping a Hat boat with supplies, he 
sent it around to the Wabash, with forty-six men under 
the command of his cousin, Lieutenant John Rogers. 
Then he gathered a force of French militia to eke out 
his own scanty numbers; and with a miniature army of 
four or five companies, embracing altogether one hun- 
dred and seventy men, he set out, on the 5th of Febru- 
ary, to capture a British commander ensconced, as the 
Virginia commander had every reason to suppose, in a 
rebuilt fort armed with cannon and well supplied for a 
siege, and with a garrison equal to half the number of 
the besiegers. Striking north to reach the well-defined 

1 Law's Colonial History of T7;HY«/(t\«(V"inceniies, 1858), p. 28. Law 
says that it was through the influence of Father Gibault that Vigo 
was released. At Gibault's iustauce the people refused to supply the 
garrison with food unless Vigo was set free. Probably this was one 
of the various causes that led Hamilton to compliment Gibault by 
calling him " an active agent of the rebels, and whose vicious and im- 
moral conduct was sufficient to i]o infinite mischief in a country 
where ignorance and bigotry give fidl scope to the depravity of a 
licentious ecclesiastic. This wretch it was who absolved the French 
inhabitants from their allegiance to the King of Great Britain. To 
enumerate the vices of the inhabitants would be to give a long cata- 
logue, but to assert that they are not iu possession o( a single virtue, 
is not more than truth and justice require; still the most eminently 
vicious and scandalous was the Reverend Mousr. Gibault."— Hamil- 
ton's Report. 

838 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

St. Louis trail, by day Clark's men made slow marches, 
with the rain pelting their faces and soaking their 
clothes, and the mud often knee-deep. At night Clark 
cheered their drooping spirits by feasts of buffalo-meat 
and other game shot during the day, and by songs and 
war-dances after the Indian fashion. Twelve days out 
they came to the Embarrass River only to find the coun- 
try all under water, save only a small hillock where they 
passed the night without food or fire. 

Kext day they heard with joy Hamilton's morning 
gun. Men were sent off to find boats; but after spend- 
ing a day and a night in the water they returned to 
report not a foot of dry land to be discovered. For 
two days they were without food of any kind, but on 
the third day a deer was killed; two more days fol- 
lowed without so much as a bite of provision ; the sea 
of waters seemed unending ; and nothing but the un- 
failing good -nature and tact of the leader kept the 
French from turning back and the Virginians from 
being discouraged. The morning and evening guns at ^z 
Fort Sackville came over the waters with their tantaliz- 
ing boom; and still the rains descended and the floods 
increased. On the 21st of February things had come 
to the most serious pass. The water ahead was neck- 
high, and Clark's looks showed how serious was the 
situation. Realizing from the wave of dejection that 
passed over his men when they saw his troubled face, 
that all depended absolutely on his own courage and 
fortitude, he immediately took a handful of powder 
and, wetting it, smeared his face after the manner of 
the savages. It was the signal for the onslaught, and 
when he plunged into the flood the others followed as 
if pushing on the foe. Then he struck up a backwoods 
ditty, and that too was taken up ; and before the song 

233 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

was suffered to die out all had reached Sugar Camp and 
a half acre of dry land. Next morning at sunrise they 
again dashed into the waters; but this time instead of a 
song there was a stern command to Major Bowman to 
shoot the iirst who turned back. The water was waist- 
high ; and when Clark found himself sensibly failing he 
began to fear for the weak ones. So he ordered the 
canoes to ply back and forth, supporting the men, till 
all had come safely to land. Smiling fortune now came 
in the guise of a canoeful of squaws with a quarter of 
buffalo, corn, tallow, and kettles. While the stronger 
ones walked their weaker brothers up and down the 
shore in order to restore circulation, broth was made 
and the hungry were nourished. Then, too, the sun, 
long hidden, came out to dry the soaked clothing, and 
put heart into the men. Its beams lit up the wide and 
level plain, and in plain sight stood Fort Sackville, the 
goal of their march indeed, but still to be conquered. 

At this juncture Clark was so fortunate as to capture 
some duck-hunters, from whom he learned that Hamil- 
ton had no thought of attack, and that the French and 
Indians in the town were well disposed towards the 
Virginians. With a line knowledge of French charac- 
ter, Clark sent to the people of Vincennes a message 
saying that he proposed to take the town that night, 
warning the friendly ones to keep in their houses, and 
advising the adherents of the British to seek the fort 
and, joining the hair -buyer general, to fight like men. 
It is needless to say that the people stayed at home. 
Not an intimation of Clark's coming was given to 
Hamilton, and the first patter of bullets against the 
palisades was thought to be the usual friendly salute 
from a party of savages returning from the hunt. 
Having stolen up to good positions behind houses, 

234 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

ditches, and the banks of the river, Clark's men, tired 
and hungry as they were, kept up an intermittent fire 
throughout the night of the 23d, wounding six of the 
garrison. Meantime the besieged sent cannon-balls 
over the heads of the Virginians, doing no damage to 
life and not much to property. When daylight came, 
the frontier riflemen picked off the gunners as they 
served the cannon ; and about nine in the morning 
Clark sent a peremptory demand for the surrender of 
the fort. " If I am obliged to storm," says Clark, "you 
may depend on such treatment as is justly due a mur- 
derer." These are strong words, but they expressed 
mildty the feelings of the Virginians towards those who 
had employed Indians to murder settlers. Virginians, 
moved by revenge, at times might commit atrocious 
massacres of savages, but they did not employ Indians 
against the British ; and Clark even refused the request 
of The Tobacco's Son and his warriors to take part in 
the assault of Fort Sackville. 

Hamilton, finding his men determined "to stick by 
him as the shirt to his back," replied that he and his 
garrison were " not disposed to be awed into any action 
unworthy of British subjects"; but in the afternoon the 
two commanders arranged a meeting at the little log 
church near the fort, the scene of Gibault's absolution of 
the people from the oath of allegiance and also the place 
where the same people had kissed the crucifix in token 
of abject submission to the King of England. Hamilton 
was willing to retire with his garrison to Pensacola ; 
Clark insisted on unconditional surrender, saying that 
his men were eager to avenge the murder of their rela- 
tives and friends, and that nothing less than immediate 
surrender would satisfy them. As for himself, Clark said 
that he knew that the greater part of the Indian parti- 

2:55 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

sans from Detroit were in the fort, and he wanted an 
excuse either to put them to death or otherwise treat 
them as he saw fit. The choice, therefore, was between 
massacre and surrender at discretion. Even while the 
parley was in progress, Clark's men had taken some fif- 
teen or sixteen Indians within sight of the fort, and 
there had made them sing their death -song and had 
tomahawked them one by one, by way of warning. On 
consultation with his officers, Clark was led to modif} T 
his demands ; and late in the evening articles of capitu- 
lation were signed. 

At ten o'clock on the morning of February 25th, the 
garrison marched out with fixed bayonets. The colors 
not having been hoisted that morning, Hamilton was 
spared the humiliation of hauling thern down, a fact 
soothing to his much- wounded pride. There is no doubt 
that Hamilton made the best of a bad situation. The 
French at Vincennes were favorable to the Americans 
because France was in alliance with the Colonies ; and 
there was some prospect that the French rule might be 
re-established ; and because in his slender garrison the 
only persons on whom he could rely were the few regu- 
lars whom he had brought with him. The Indians, 
fickle by nature, were on the side of the winners. 

Having taken possession of the fort, Clark ordered 
a salute of thirteen guns in honor of the Colo- 
nies. To add to the hilarity, Captain Helm brought 
in Mr. Justice Dejean, with a party from Detroit, 
and an abundance of stores and clothing. Now pov- 
erty was turned to affluence, and in the joy of success 
the pains and hunger of the long march were forgot- 
ten. On March 8th, the prisoners, twenty - seven in 
number, began their journey to Williamsburg, a dis- 
tance of twelve hundred miles. It was not a comfort- 

236 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

able trip even to a backwoodsman ; but to the humili- 
ated Hamilton, used to all the comforts of life, the 
crowded boat, the lack of shelter from the rain, the long 
day at the oars, the scanty allowance of bear's flesh and 
Indian-meal, and the long march to the James River, 
all gave him nearly three months of keenest misery. 
On June 15th, he was met at Chesterfield with an order 
from Governor Thomas Jefferson, by virtue of which he 
was taken in irons to Williamsburg. Weary, hungry, 
thirsty, in wet clothes, the British lieutenant-governor 
at Detroit stood at the door of the executive palace 
while the mob gathered to escort him to jail. There he 
found Justice Dejean also in fetters, and the two were 
thrust into a narrow cell already occupied by five 
drunken criminals. On the last day of August Major 
Hay and the other prisoners arrived, and the officers 
were made to share Hamilton's " dungeon." For nine- 
teen months Hamilton endured his confinement; on 
October 10, 1780, he was suffered to go to New York 
on parole, and in the following March he returned to 
England. 1 . 

Gratified, but not elated, by his success at Yincennes, 
Clark now sat down to count the cost of continuing his 

1 There is no question that the treatment accorded to Hamilton by 
the Virginia authorities was severe beyond the rules of warfare, and 
when the matter was reported to Washington he succeeded in bringing 
about a modification of it. Had Hamilton been willing to give the 
usual parole he would have fared better. At the same time, it should 
be remembered that Virginia held a court of inquiry, in which it was 
shown, at least to the satisfaction of those who were called on to decide 
the question, that Hamilton bad been guilty of buying scalps of Vir- 
ginians from the Iudians— a crime that stirred every drop of resentful 
blood in the veins of the countrymen of the victims. Hamilton's 
kindness to Boone, and his repeated warnings to the Indians to bring 
prisoners instead of scalps, were overlooked, and not unnaturally. 

237 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

expedition to Detroit, where, as he learned, there were 
but eighty men in the garrison, and the people were well 
disposed towards the Americans. At this juncture the 
flat-boat Willing appeared, coming up the Wabash with 
the reinforcements and supplies from Kaskaskia. On 
board was Morris, a messenger from Governor Thomas 
Jefferson, who sent assurances that more troops would 
be forthcoming from Virginia. This decided Clark to 
appoint a rendezvous at Vincennes in July, preparatory 
to a dash for the capital of the Northwest. In antici- 
pation of this new venture he first terrorized the Detroit 
militia, then he gave them boats, arms, and provisions. 
He told them that he was anxious to restore them to 
the families from whom they had been torn, and after- 
wards he sent them home to spread the news of the 
kindly disposition of the Virginians. Next he gave the 
Indians to understand that he was not very particular 
whether they sided with him or not. If they were dis- 
posed to keep the peace, they would fare the better for 
so doing ; if they did not behave themselves they would 
suffer for their misconduct. This method of procedure 
had the best possible effect; for while it did not keep 
the Indians from mischief — nothing could do that— it 
caused Clark to be feared from New Orleans to Lake 
Superior. 

Making Lieutenant Brashear commandant of the 
fort, renamed Fort Patrick Henry, and placing Cap- 
tain Helm in charge of civil affairs, Clark embarked on 
the Willing and dropped down the Wabash, bound for 
Kaskaskia. On his arrival he found that Captain Kob- 
ert George and his company of twoscore men had come 
from New Orleans, and in May Colonel Todd came to 
establish courts at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes. 
In July Clark returned to Vincennes to find but a hand- 

238 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

fill of Kentucky troops, and none from Virginia. Then 
he knew that, for the present, at least, all thoughts of 
capturing Detroit must be given up, and afterwards 
the propitious time never came. 

The conquest of the Illinois country, brilliant as the 
exploit was in itself, was to be made of permanent value 
by the statesmen who afterwards used it as the basis of 
claims and negotiations in the making of treaties. Gov- 
ernor Thomas Jefferson, thoroughly appreciating the ad- 
vantages of Clark's work, now turned his attention to 
making it effective not only against England, our en- 
emy, but also against France and Spain, our momentary 
friends. In pursuance of this policy, he sent Clark to 
select a location for a fort on the Mississippi below the 
mouth of the Ohio, the object being to establish the 
American claim to the navigation of the great river. 
In order to make sure of his ground, Jefferson sent the 
surveyors Walker and Smith to take observations of the 
latitudes ; and he gave instructions to Major Martin, Vir- 
ginia's Cherokee agent, to purchase from that tribe the 
" little tract of country between the Mississippi, Ohio, 
Tanissee, and Carolina line," in which the fort was to 
be located. Clark was to build the fort " as near the 
mouth of the Ohio as can be found fit for fortification 
and within our own lines," and Jefferson charged him 
to have a care as to the wood of which he made stock- 
ades, " that it be of the most lasting kind." Such was 
the origin of Fort Jefferson ; and the foresight of Vir- 
ginia's governor at this time gives him strong claims to 
the title of the original expansionist. 1 

Jefferson's instructions to Clark show vividly the 



1 For the diplomatic importance of this step, see Kitche?i's History 
of the United States, vol. ii., p. 512 et seq. 

239 



r H i: \ R r li w i:> v r N DER I'll R BE FLAGS 

tinaiu-i.il distress of Virginia at a time when these plans 
for western expansion were being carried out, and give 
the reason w hv more extensive campaigns oould not be 
undertaken. 1 Instead o( bounty money, Jefferson sent 
three hundred Land-warrants of 560 aores eaoh, "which 
at forty pounds the hundred, being the Treasury price, 
amounts to the bounty allowed by law"; also he sent 
twenty four blank commissions for the eight companies 
of the battalion Clark was authorized to raise. The 
drafts for the Illinois expedition were coming in, ami, as 
the paper currency was badly depreciated, Jefferson was 
perplexed as to the amount that ought to be paid on 
them. "The difficulty o( answering demands o( hard 
money," writes Jefferson, "makes it accessary for us to 
OOntraot no debts where our paper is no: current. It. 
throws on us the tedious and perplexing question of in- 
vesting paper money in tobacco, finding transportation 
for the tobaoco to France repeating this as often as the 
dangers of capture render necessary to insure the safe 
arrival of some part and negotiating bills, besides the 
expensive train o( agents to do all this, and the delay 
it occasions to the creditor. We must, therefore, recom- 
mend you to purchase nothing beyond the Ohio which 
you can do without, or which may be obtained from the 
east side, where our paper is eurrent." Clark is warned 
that supplies of clothing will be precarious, and that as 
far as possible he should rely on skins. "In short," 
says the governor. "I must confide in yon to take such 
care of the men under you as an economical house- 
holder would of his own family, doing everything with- 
in himself as far as he can, and calling for as few sup- 



- d to Clark, January 00. 1780, l\ HMSL in Library 

Of Cor. 

MO 




'I HOMAfl .11.1 f I 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

plies as possible." Jefferson further advised the with- 
drawal of a portion of the troops from west of the 
Ohio, leaving only so many as might be necessary for 
keeping the Illinois settlements in spirits and for their 
real protection ; he questioned the expediency of build- 
ing a fort at Kaskaskia ; he approved the mild meas- 
ures taken towards the French ; because " we wish 
them to consider us as brothers and participate with us 
in the benefit of our laws." 

Jefferson instructed Clark to cultivate peace and cord- 
ial friendship with all Indians but the Shawanese. "En- 
deavor that those who are in friendship with us live 
in peace also with one another. Against those who are 
our enemies let loose the friendly tribes. The Kika- 
pous should be encouraged against the hostile tribes of 
Chickasaws and Choctaws, and the others against the 
Shawanese. With the latter be cautious of the terms of 
peace you admit. An evacuation of their country and 
removal utterly out of interference with us would be 
the most satisfactory." 

"As to the English," says Jeffei^on, in a spirit of 
magnanimity that shines out brightly amid the exaspera- 
tions of barbarous warfare, "notwithstanding their base 
example, we wish not to expose them to the inhumanity 
of a savage enemy. Let this reproach remain on them. 
But for ourselves, we would not have our national char- 
acter tarnished with such a practice. If, indeed, they 
strike the Indians, these will have a natural right to 
punish the aggressors, and with none to hinder them. It 
will then be no act of ours. But to invite them to a 
participation of the war is what we would avoid by all 
possible means. If the English would admit them to 
trade, and by that means get those wants supplied which 
we cannot supply, I should think it right, provided they 
Q 241 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

require from them no terms of departing from their neu- 
trality. If they will not permit this, I think the Ind- 
ians might be urged to break off all correspondence with 
them, to forbid their emissaries from coming among 
them, and to send them to you if they disregard the 
prohibition. It would be well to communicate honestly 
to them our present want of those articles necessary for 
them, and our inability to get them ; to encourage them 
to struggle with the difficulties as we do till peace, when 
they may be confidently assured we will spare nothing 
to put their trade on a comfortable and just footing. In 
the mean time we must endeavor to furnish them with 
ammunition to provide skins to clothe themselves. With 
a disposition to do them every friendly office and to gain 
their love we would yet wish to avoid their visits." 

That Jefferson was thoroughly alive to the impor- 
tance of a Detroit expedition as a means of punishing 
the Indians is made plain by his letters to Washing- 
ton. In the spring of 1780, when the commander-in- 
chief was contemplating an expedition from Fort Pitt, 
to be commanded by Colonel Brodhead, Jefferson wrote 
to suggest that Clark also was planning such an attack, 
that two expeditions were unnecessary, and that a joint 
expedition was impossible, because the two officers could 
not act together. Again, in September, Jefferson 1 
called Washington's attention to the fact that Vir- 
ginia at great expense was maintaining from five to 
eight hundred men for the defence of her frontiers 
against the British -paid Indians; he suggested that 
the reduction of Detroit would "cover all the States 
to the southeast of it," and said that nothing but the 
cost (which had been figured at two million pounds of 



Jefferson to Washington, February 10 and September 2G, 1780. 
242 



THE QUEBEC ACT AND THE REVOLUTION 

the current money) prevented the colony from under- 
taking the task. As it was, Virginia stood ready to 
furnish the men, provisions, and every necessary except 
powder, provided her money burdens in other quarters 
could be lightened. "When I speak of furnishing the 
men," writes the governor, " I mean they should be mi- 
litia, such being the popularity of Colonel Clarke and 
the confidence of the Western people in him that he 
could raise the requisite number at any time." Jefferson 
suggested that Washington consider whether he Avould 
not be justified in authorizing the expedition at the 
general expense, particularly " as the ratification of the 
confederation has been rested on our cession of a part 
of our western claim, a cession which (speaking my pri- 
vate opinion) I verily believe will be agreed to if the 
quantity demanded is not unreasonably great." 

By December matters had reached such a pass that 
Jefferson regarded as imperative an advance on Detroit. 
A formidable movement of British and Indians was or- 
ganizing for the purpose of spreading destruction and dis- 
may through the whole frontier; and in order to prevent 
this the Western enemy must be employed in his own 
country. Virginia, in her own defence, was prepared 
to commit this work to Clark, leaving it to Congress to 
decide afterwards as to whether the expense should be 
State or Continental. At this time the only thing asked 
was the loan of artillery, ammunition, and tools from 
Fort Pitt; and this favor Jefferson did not hesitate to 
ask, because Virginia had furnished to that fort supplies 
which had been loaned freely to both the Northern and 
the Southern army.' 

Clark also appealed to Washington, and the com- 



1 Jefferson to Washington, December 13, 1780. 
243 



T 1 1 E N It T 1 1 W E ST UNI) E R T 11 R E E F L A I . S 

mander-in-ohief was glad enough to order Colonel Brod- 
head at Fort Pitt to supply the Virginia leader with the 
necessary stores. None could appreciate better than 
Washington himself the advantages of offensive meas- 
ures against Detroit; and possibly even at this time he 
was turning over in his mind the idea he afterwards 
expressed — that if the Americans should be defeated 
along the sea-coast, he would gather the remnants of 
the armies, and beyond the Alleghanies would found a 
new State on the fertile banks of the Ohio. Unfortu- 
nately for Clark's plan to reduce Detroit, however, ev- 
ery attempt to collect men for so long an expedition 
failed ; and during the remainder of the war the country 
between the Ohio and the Great Lakes was one vast 
neutral ground, over which now prowled a band of sav- 
ages and rangers from Detroit, on their murderous way 
to the Kentucky forts ; and again dashed pursuing Ken- 
tucky backwoodsmen, frantic to revenge the murders of 
neighbors and relatives. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 

Feederick Haldimand, whose fortune it was to gov- 
ern the Northwest during the latter part of the Revolu- 
tion, had attained the rank of lieutenant - colonel in the 
Swiss Guards, a regiment in the service of the States- 
General of Holland, when the Seven Years' War led Eng- 
land to organize the Royal American Regiment for ser- 
vice in this country. Through the urgency of the British 
minister at the Hague, Major-General Sir Joseph Yorke, 
Haldimand and his intimate friend Henry Bouquet had 
accepted commissions to serve under John, Earl of 
Loudoun, the colonel of the battalion, the understand- 
ing being that the two Swiss officers should be placed 
immediately as colonels commanding, in order to re- 
move their natural objections to taking service under 
an officer inferior to them in rank in Europe. In 1756 
Haldimand began his service in America as comman- 
dant at Philadelphia; next he went to Albany as colonel 
of the Royal Americans, whence he returned to Penn- 
sylvania to command the troops charged with the pro- 
tection of the frontiers. In 1758 he was in the terrible 
repulse of Abercrombie by Montcalm at Fort Edward, 
and he served in the Ticonderoga campaign. During 
the next year he had the satisfaction of rebuilding Sir 
William Johnson's fort at Oswego, and repelling the 
attack of that noted partisan leader, St. Luc la Corne, 

245 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

and his Indians. When the French surrendered Mon- 
treal, in 1760, Haldimand took command, and two years 
later was transferred to Three Rivers, once noted as a 
fur market and then prospectively the seat of the manu- 
facture of iron at the St. Maurice forges. 

While at this post, Haldimand took advantage of the 
law allowing officers who had served two years in the 
Royal Americans to become British citizens. In 1767 
he was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general and 
ordered to Pensacola as commander of his Majesty's 
troops in all the southern colonies, the position that was 
held by Bouquet at the time of his death in the autumn 
of 1765. Having exercised his energy to put that post 
in a sanitary condition, Haldimand received his reward 
in the shape of a transfer to New York.-' There the tea 
troubles found him; and when he was importuned to 
call out the troops to suppress rioting, he wrote to 
General Amherst that he should " remain a quiet specta- 
tor of their (the peoples') follies until the civil, having 
made use of all its power, demand the assistance of the 
military, which I shall grant them with all the precau- 
tions required by the constitution "; and he refused ab- 
solutely to use the militia without a civil magistrate at 
their head. The people of New York, being in no mood 
to make fine distinctions, took the occasion of his visit 
to Gage at Boston to break into his house, demolish the 
furniture, and loot his stables. 

But for England's desire to have the chief command 

1 Pensacola consisted of a stockade fort, a few straggling houses, 
a governor's house, and miserable bark huts, without floors, for the 
officers and men. Haldimand widened the streets so as to give a free 
circulation of air, and made other sanitary improvements, by which 
he reduced sickness and banished death during the ensuing summer, 
though the mercury stood at 114°. — Pittraau's Present State of English 
Settlements on the Mississippi. 

246 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 

in America devolve upon a Briton born, Haldimand 
might have been continued in New York; as it was, he 
was made a major-general and sent to inspect the West 
Indian forces, from which position he was called to suc- 
ceed Carleton at Quebec. Reaching his new post on 
June 30, 1778, Haldimand immediately set himself to 
administer his government with conscientious thorough- 
ness. With Ethan Allen and his fellows Haldimand 
carried on negotiations for a reunion of Vermont with 
the crown of England ; and he was active in seating the 
loyalists, or Tories, on the crown-lands of Canada. Just 
and considerate towards the officers under him, yet in- 
flexible in doing his duty, and prudent in his expendi- 
tures, he never failed to recognize merit or to call offend- 
ers to account. It was fortunate for the United States 
and for the people of the frontiers that the commanding 
officer at Qecbec contented himself with administering 
his government in an unexceptionable manner. A more 
ambitious officer, or an Englishman of vigor and initia- 
tive, might have driven the Americans from the Wabash 
and the Illinois, and thus forced the national boundary 
back to the Ohio. 1 He was quite satisfied to let the 
border war drag on, without urging his subordinates to 
more activity than they displayed, his greatest concern 
being that the expenses of feeding and clothing the 
Indians were so enormously out of proportion to the 
results attained. 2 

1 The death of Sir William Johnson, on July 4, 1774, and of Bouquet 
in 1765, together with the return of Amherst in 1764, and the supplant- 
ing of Carleton with Burgoyne for the New York campaign, were cir- 
cumstances favorable to the Americans — how favorable has been the 
subject of much speculation. 

2 See Brymner's Introduction to the Canadian ArcJiives, 1887, and 
Smith's Bouquet's Expedition for details of Haldimaud's life. After 
a perusal of the Haldimand correspondence one can scarcely fail to 

247 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Clark's capture of Vincennes and the Illinois posts 
paralyzed the English efforts to carry on an offensive 
campaign on the frontiers of the United States, and con- 
fined their efforts to petty warfare in the shape of 
Indian raids against the Ohio Kiver and the Kentucky 
settlements. Haldimand even despaired of being able 
to prevent the Western Indians from deserting the 
British cause, so active were the American emissaries, 
and such was the effect on the fickle savages of the 
capture of Hamilton. The Six Nations, however, were 
loyal, notwithstanding the fact that the Americans had 
destroyed man}' of their villages and had forced their 
women and children to take refuge at Niagara. But 
Haldimand foresaw that, should the indifference of the 
Western tribes continue, Detroit must share the fate of 
Vincennes, in case Clark were to advance with a con- 
siderable force. The only successes Haldimand could 
report to Lord George Germain during the summer of 
1779 were the savage massacres on the Susquehanna 
and Mohawk rivers, where the settlements had been 
broken up, the stock destroyed, and the inhabitants driven 
back into the interior. To offset this the Americans 
had destroyed the fort at Oswego. 

Two difficulties beset Haldimand — lack of troops and 
lack of provisions. To his eminently practical mind it 
seemed little short of a crime that the fertile lands about 
the posts of Detroit and Niagara had not been put 
under cultivation to supply the wants of the garrisons, 
thus to save the enormous expense of transporting pro- 
visions all the way from England to the Upper Lakes, 
an expense increased by the way American privateers 

appreciate the integrity and the justice of this officer; and a reading 
of his diary, written after his return to England, will reveal a very 
engaging personality. 

248 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 

had adopted of lying in wait for the " victuallers " ap- 
pearing at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. In addition 
to the support of the regular garrisons, the British had 
Indian mouths to feed — the Six Nations at Niagara, 
and at Detroit the nations as far south as the Ohio, in 
all between three and five thousand persons, at an ex- 
pense of nearly $90,000.' And this " notwithstanding 
the numbers of war-parties continually kept abroad to 
lessen the consumption." The merchants of the country 
took every advantage of war-times to get a great profit 
on their wares, especially on rum, paint, and other 
Indian necessaries; so that Haldimand was impelled to 
take measures to break up the " corners " and " trusts " 
that these enterprising traders devised. 2 

Kichard Beringer Lernoult, a captain in the King's 
regiment with thirty-three years of service to his credit, 
was left in charge of both civil and military affairs at 
Detroit when Hamilton started on his ill-fated expedi- 
tion to the Wabash. The captain did not feel himself 
capable, either physically or mentally, of bearing the 
burdens of so onerous a command ; but nevertheless he 

1 " It evidently appears that the Indians in general wish to protract 
the war, and are most happy when most frequently fitted out; it is 
impossible they can draw resources from the Rebels, and they abso- 
lutely depend upon us for every blanket they are covered with." — 
Haldimand to De Peyster, August 10, 1780. "I observe with great 
concern the astonishing consumption of Rum at Detroit, amounting 
to 17,520 gallons per year."— Haldimand to Lernoult, July 23, 1779. 

There were also troubles of like character in England. A Mr. Stuart 
cleared £70,000 by contracting for a supply of beads, tomahawks, 
and scalping knives for the Indians ; and a Mr. Atkinson took a rum 
contract at exactly double the price which it cost him. These facts 
were notorious ; but Lord North stifled the investigation. — Fitzmau- 
rice's Life of Shelbunie, vol. iii., p. 70. 

2 Haldimand's letters to Lord George Germain, 1779-80, in Michigan 
Pioneer Collections, vol. x. 

249 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

acquitted himself so acceptably that, on being ordered 
to Niagara after two years of service at Detroit, he was 
promoted to a majority. From the interpreter Isadbre 
Chene, the only white man in the expedition to escape 
capture, Lernoult learned of Hamilton's misfortune a 
full month after Vincennes was captured. " This most 
unlucky shake,'' as the captain called it, " with the ap : 
proach of so large a party of Virginians advancing tow- 
ards St. Duskie, has greatly damped the spirits of the 
Indians." The situation at Detroit called for something 
more than a simple tall fence of pickets; for it was ex- 
pected the Americans would bring cannon with them, 
and in that case the town would be at their mercy. 
Therefore Captain Lernoult set about building a fort on 
the rise of ground back of the town, the site being that 
now occupied in part by the federal building. Captain 
Bird, an assistant engineer of the Eighth, having been 
intrusted with the new construction, traced a square 
on the hill and added half-bastions — not a satisfactory 
piece of work from an engineer's stand-point, as he him- 
self admitted ; l but the best that could be done in the 
hurry of the occasion. From the November of 1778 to 
the following February, Bird pressed on the work ; but 
when the ice began to leave the river his military soul 
longed for more active service. Turning over to Lieu- 
tenant Du Vernett the task of completing Fort Lernoult, 
Captain Bird joined himself to a band of Indians going 
on the war-path. Possibly his martial ardor had been 
stirred by Clark's message that he was glad to hear that 
the British were making new works at Detroit, "as it 
saves the Americans some expenses in building." 

Having collected at Upper Sandusky a force of about 

1 Bird to Brigadier general Powell, August 13, 1782.— If aid mi and 
Papers. 

250 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 

two hundred savages, chiefly Shawanese, Bird was anx- 
ious to start ; but, just at the hour for departure, a runner 
appeared, bringing news that the Kentuckians' had at- 
tacked the Shawanese towns, had burned houses, carried 
off horses, and wounded five or six Indians. 2 In an in- 
stant all was confusion. The savages were in a panic. 
" There was much counselling and no resolves." Bird 
was forced to sacrifice four of his cattle for the feasts ; 
the "unsteady rogues" put him oat of all patience; 
they were "always cooking or counselling!" And thus 
the expedition came to an end. This action on the part 
of . the Shawanese, the bravest and most revengeful of 
all the Western Indians was characteristic. Again and 
again they importuned the commandant at Detroit for 
help against the Americans ; but although they were 
fed and clothed at British expense, a rumor running 
through the forest, or the report of an ambush planned 
by the whites, threw them into such consternation that 
months of feasting and idleness were necessary to work 
them up to the fighting pitch. 

Captain Bird, however, was not to be disappointed. 
During the spring of 1778 a small force of regulars 
from Fort Pitt had built Fort Mcintosh on the site 
now occupied by the quiet old town of Beaver; and 
that autumn General Lachlin Mcintosh had advanced 
to the banks of the Upper Muskingum, called the Tus- 
carawas, where he had built, near the present site of 
Bolivar, Fort Laurens, named for the President of Con- 
gress. During the winter the garrison had little trouble ; 
but one day in the spring the Indians stole the fort 

1 Bird to Lernoult, June 9, 1779. — Haldimand Papers. 

2 This was the raid of John Bowraau, Logan, Harrod, and others, 
against Chillicothe. In the end the Kentuckians were defeated. See 
Roosevelt's Winning of the West, vol. ii., p. 97. 

251 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

horses, took off their bells, and jangled them along a 
wood-path. Of the sixteen men who went out to bring 
in the horses, fourteen were killed on the spot and the 
other two were captured. That evening the anxious 
garrison counted eight hundred and forty-seven savages 
in war-paint and feathers marching across the prairie 
exult ingly celebrating their victory. 1 Then they disap- 
peared; and Colonel Gibson, thinking the occasion op- 
portune for sending the invalids to Fort Pitt, started a 
dozen sick men under an escort of fifteen soldiers. Of 
this party only four escaped an ambush laid within two 
miles of the fort. A few days later, as General Mcin- 
tosh was coming up with a relief of seven hundred men, 
the pack-horses took fright at the welcoming salute from 
the fort and carried the provisions off into the wood, so 
that they were not recovered. That autumn the well- 
nigh starved garrison retreated, and the story of Fort 
Laurens was told. 2 

Bird was present at some of the attacks on Fort Lau- 
rens, and in May he led a party of one hundred and 
fifty whites and a thousand Indians to Kentucky, where 
he captured two small stockades on the Licking, and 
then retreated rapidly to Detroit, probably because the 
Indians were, as usual, satisfied with a small success se- 
cured by surprise, and had no inclination to give battle 
to an enemy on the alert. Nor did they escape too 
soon ; for the Kentuckians, enraged at so defiant an on- 

1 Simon Girt}' reported the number of Indians as between seven 
hundred and eight hundred — Six Nations, Delawares, and Shawa- 
nese. Lernoult wrote to Colonel Bolton at Niagara that he had done 
everything iu his power to encourage the Indians, having sent them 
large supplies of ammunition, clothing, and presents for the chief 
warriors. 

2 Doddridge's Settlement and Indian Wars of Virginia and Pennsyl- 
vania (Albany, 1867), p. 244 et seq. 

252 



I II E WAR I X Til E X OUT II WE8T 

making Clark their Leader, hurried up the Ohio and 
struck i to Pickaway, where they battered the 

palisades with a three-pounder and scattered the Ind- 
ians, driving them into the forests.' After this thrust 
and counter-thrust, quiet came for a season. 

The broad waters of Lake Huron were darkening un- 
der the sharp October winds when, in 1 779, the bustling, 
garrulous, impecunious old soldier, Patt Sinclair, as he 
signed himself, landed on the sandy stretches of Siichil- 
imackinac to succeed De Peyster. ordered to Detroit. 2 
Sinclair had been sent to America by Lord George Ger- 
main to join Lord Howe at Philadelphia. Evidently he 
was not wanted in Philadelphia; whereupon he was sent 
to the hyperborean regions of Mackinac as Lieutenant- 
Governor and Superintendent of Indian Affairs, his com- 
mission being the same as the one Hamilton had carried 
to Detroit. By purchase, and twenty-five years of ser- 
vice, Sinclair had attained a rank in the army that he 
was not disposed to relinquish ; and he insisted that 
Lord George Germain had intended him to enjoy both 
the military and the civil command, and especially the 
emoluments thereof. He even threatened to return to 
England if his desires on this point should not be sat- 
isfied ; but Haldimand, knowing the man, requested him 
to repair to his post with all convenient despatch. 

Before reaching his new station, Sinclair had landed 
on the turtle-shaped island of Michilirnackinac, the fa- 

1 Theodore Roosevelt, in vol. ii. of his Winning of the West, gives a 
graphic account, of this inroad, basing his narrative on the Durrett, 
Bradford, and McAffee manuscripts. 

2 On October 4th Sinclair arrived at " Old Machinaw," or Michili- 
rnackinac. De Peyster sailed on his Majesty's sloop Welcome, on Oc- 
tober loth, arriving at Detroit on October 20th, after a voyage of four 
days and fifteen hours. — Kelton's Anaah of Fort Mackinac (Jaoker 
edition, 1891), p. 132. 

253 



T 11 E NORTH W EST N DEE Til R EE FLAGS 

bled home of the fairies ami the favorite abode of the 
manitous o( the Indians. Deoked out in the gorgeous 
linos o( autumn, the stately island, with wooded oliffs 
rising high above the olear waters of the lake, seemed 
to Sinolair a natural site for fort and trailing- post. 
With him to see was to deoide, and to deoide was to aot, 
Without waiting for the governor's sanction, he built a 
blook-house to oommand Baldimand Bay, as he ingrati- 
atingly named the harbor; ami Quebec, entirely willing 
to have the ohange made, spared no pains to furnish the 
requisite carpenters ami supplies. All through the win- 
ter of 177: 1 SO work was pushed on wharf ami stoekade; 
four aores were cleared for the fort, and all the prepa- 
rations were made for burning the abundant limestone. 
llaldimand expressed his desire that the post continue 
to bear the name o\i Miehilimaekinae, and that the fort 
be styled Fort Mackinac. " 1 have never known any 
advantage result." he says, " from changing the names 
of plaees long inhabited by the same people." ' 

Fort building did not occupy Captain Sinolair to the 
exclusion of his war duties. Before he had been a 
month in his command he had heard of Father Gibault, 
who had been at Miehilimaekinae on a mission, Sinclair 
says, from General Carleton and the Bishop of Quebec ; 
but against whom, even though he was "an Individual 
of the Sacred and respectable Clergy," the doughty 
captain proposed to direct the severity of the Indians. 
Nor was his ardor cooled during the winter; on the con- 
trary, he sought two mandates against the "vagabond 

1 The Sinclair-Haldimand correspondence is given in vols. ix. and 
x. of the v ' ' an Pioneer and Histoi 'ions. 

Work on the new post was begun on November 6th, the title to the 
island having been Becured by IV Peyatex from the Chippewa chief 
Kitchienago,— Kelton's Annate, p. L83, 

•:-. t 



'J iJ E w A J: I N T H E NORTH W E S T 

irbo styles himself near-general of the Illinois." in order 

to -1 blast any remains of reputation which the wretch 
may have been able to preserve among scoundrels al- 
mosi i himself; and these he proposed 

to genre on Cibault by means of the band of Indians he- 
was planning to send down the Mississippi to act against 
the Spanish settlements, in conjunction with General 
Campbell's proposed attack on New Orleans and the 
lower towns. Nor was he to be duped into forgetting 
the near-by post of St. Joseph. That "nest of tare 
as Sinclair called it. "he proposed to sweep clean" for 
the reception of the American general — a mixture of 
metaphors more expressive than accurate. 1 

When, at the coming of Captain Sterling, in October, 
1705, St. xVnge de Bellerivehad hauled down the French 
flag at Fort Chartres. to hoist it again temporarily on the 
territory yielded by his nation to Spain by the secret 
treaty of November 3, 1702. he was virtually at the head 
of an independent government composed of himself as 
commandarr sbre as judge, and Joseph Labusciere 

as notary, all of whom had come from the Illinois country. 
The French on the English side of the Mississippi were 
so well satisfied with this impromptu St. Louis govern- 
ment that when Captain Sterling died, in the December 
following his advent, the people at Fort Chartres ap- 
pealed to St. Ange to settle their disputes until a new 
commandant should arrive. Thus it happened that a 
French-Canadian was ruler over both English and Span- 
ish territory. So well did the old man fulfil his trust 

1 From ITfJ^ to 177o Father Gibault, as vicar-general of the Illinois 
country, extended Ij is ministrations to Michilimackiriac ; Lis Jesuit 
predecessor. Father M. L. Lefranc, having been the last settled priest 
at that post From 1701 till 18% no priest was stationed at the post. 
See lis', of priests in Kelton's Annalt, p. 15 et *&}. 
. 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

that in 1767, when the Spanish captain, Rios, and twenty- 
five men came to St. Louis, they built their fort, St. 
Charles, fourteen miles up the river. It was not until 
May 20, 1770, that St. Ange delivered possession of 
Upper Louisiana to Captain Piernas, and soon after- 
wards the omnipresent Gibault celebrated at St. Louis 
the first baptism under the Spanish flag. Placed upon 
the half-pay of a Spanish captain, the paternal old St. 
Ange passed the uneventful years until his death on 
December 27, 177L Under the mild rule of genial 
Spanish commanders, the French town of St. Louis con- 
tinued steadily to grow, notwithstanding the death, on 
June 20, 1778, of its founder, Pierre Laclede Liguest. 
He was succeeded in business by his chief clerk, Au- 
guste Choteau, who became the great trader of the 
Missouri. 1 

Much to the captain's chagrin, Haldimand professed 
small faith in Sinclair's expedition ; and, indeed, it 
amounted to little. In May, 17S0, a band of seven 
hundred and fifty traders, servants, and Indians started 
off down the Mississippi to attack the Spanish settle- 
ments and the Illinois posts. Assembling at Prairie 
du Chien, they intercepted river craft and captured 
boats loaded with provisions ; and from the lead-mines 
they brought awa} 7 seventeen Spanish and American 
prisoners. Twenty of the Canadian volunteers from 
Michilimackinac and a few of the traders attacked the 
defenceless town of St. Louis, but early in the fight, so 
soon as the Spaniards began to defend themselves, the 
Sacs and Foxes under M. Calve fell back, thereby making 
the Indians suspicious of treachery ; and M. Ducharme 



1 F. L. Billon's Annals of St. Louis tinder the French and Spanish 
Dominations (St. Louis, 1886). 

256 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 

and other traders interested in the lead -mines proved 
equally perfidious. The attack failed, but not until 
seven or more whites had been killed and eighteen 
prisoners taken and sent north to work on Sinclair's 
new island fort, A chief and three or four Winnebagos 
were the only Indian losses. 1 

The attack on St. Louis and on Cahokia, across the 
river, would not deserve attention were it not for a return 
attack on St. Joseph, which was in itself even less im- 
portant than the St. Louis expedition, but which, as seen 
through the magnifying-glass of Spanish pretensions, was 
made a matter of importance in the courts of Europe. 
A mile or so west of the present city of Niles, Michigan, 
on the south bank of the river St. Joseph, the peripa- 
tetic post of St. Joseph was resting at the time of the 
Ee volution. The name originated with La Salle, who 
paused at the mouth of the river, in 1679, and while 
waiting for Tonty, employed his men in building a fort. 
From its situation on the line of travel to the Missis- 
sippi, St. Joseph was too important to be abandoned 
altogether, while at the same time it was not of enough 
moment for extensive fortifications. Consequently, 
when one set of pickets fell into decay another stockade 
was built at a different place on the river, until the site 
near Niles was hit upon. After the peace of 1763, 
England had placed a small garrison at the post, but 
when the tornado of the Pontiac war passed over the 
place, it was not re-established, although it continued to 
be occupied as a trading- post among the Pottawato- 
mies, the leading trader, Louis Chevallier, being the 

1 Sinclair places the number of whites killed at sixty-eight ; Elihu 
H. Shepard, in his Early History of St. Louis, says that forty were 
killed. Billon says seven, and gives the names. A few others may 
have been killed at Cahokia. 

r 257 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

king's man in the district. 1 In October, 1777, Thomas 
Brady, Clark's commandant at Cahokia, had headed a 
raid on the place and captured some merchandise ; but 
on his retreat he and his party were captured. Brady 
professed his entire willingness to join the English cause; 
but ultimately made his escape and returned to Cahokia. 
In time he became sheriff of St. Clair County. In 1780 
St. Joseph contained eight houses and seven shanties, 
and the entire population consisted of forty-five French 
persons and four Pawnee slaves. 2 

Sinclair's attack on St. Louis, as has been said, was a 
part of a larger plan to recover the Mississippi valley 
for England. When Spain declared war against Eng- 
land in 1779, she made good her declaration by seizing 
the English posts of Natchez, Baton Rouge, and Mobile ; 
and these stations, together with St. Louis, gave her 
practically the control of the Mississippi valley. If now 
she could establish herself in the Northwest, she would 
then be in a position either to secure the Lake country, 
or at least would have something to trade with England 
for Gibraltar, the British possession of which stronghold 
was a thorn in the side of his most Catholic Majes- 
ty. 3 Accordingly, in the January of 1781, Don Fran- 
cisco Cruzat, commander and lieutenant-governor of the 
western parts and districts of Illinois, sent forth from 
his stone palace the militia officers Don Eugenio Pourre, 
Don Carlos Tayon, and the interpreter Don Luis Cheval- 

1 Petition of Chevallier, October 9, 1780. — Haldimand Papers. 

- Census of St. Joseph, in the letter of C. Anise, dated St. Joseph, 
June 30, 1780. — Haldimand Papers. 

3 Edward G. Mason, in the Magazine of American History, for May, 
1886, has discussed, with a wealth of detail, " The March of the Span- 
iards across Illinois." The Haldimand Papers correct some of the 
details, but Mr. Mason has worked out his problem with great fulness 
of knowledge. 

258 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 

lier, 1 accompanied by a band of Indians to make a winter 
journey of four hundred miles to capture the deserted 
post of St. Joseph ! The fatigues of that march, the 
cold of the winter, the weight of their food-burdens, all 
were set forth in strongest phrase in the report made 
by the intrepid Spaniards. As they toiled northward 
they gathered Indian adherents as a snowball gathers 
snow — for their cry was booty. With considerate lack 
of details, they reported that they made prisoners of the 
few English they found at the post, the fact being that 
there were at the place certainly no English and prob- 
ably no French, save perhaps a few trappers. "Don 
Engenio Purre took possession, in the name of the king, 
_pf that place and its dependencies, and of the river of the 
Illinois; in consequence whereof," says the Spanish re- 
port, 2 " the standard of his Majesty was there displayed 
during the whole time. He took the Enolish one and 
delivered it on his arrival at St. Louis to Don Francisco 

1 Mr. Mason conjectures that this was the Louis Chevallier who 
was king's man at St. Joseph ; but such could not have been the case. 
Chevallier of St. Joseph settled at that post about 1745 ; at the out- 
break of the Revolution he acted under the orders of Hamilton and De 
Peyster in fitting out the Indians against Vincennes, and clothing them 
when they returned naked. In June, 1780, a detachment of Canadians 
and Indians appeared at St. Joseph to remove the white people to 
Michilimackinac. Chevallier, then sixty-eight years old, together with 
his wife (aged seventy years), abandoning lands and houses, orchards 
and gardens, furniture, cattle, and debts, left the banks of the St. 
Joseph for the upper country, where he was ill-treated b}^ Sinclair. 
He petitioned Haldimand for payment of his advances, and he could 
scarcely have acted against St. Joseph during the time he was pressing 
for a settlement. Sinclair's objection to auditing his accounts was 
that Chevallier had no right to trade on his own account, being a 
member of the General Company of the Merchants of Mackinac, with 
whom the commardant dealt exclusively. 

2 Wharton's Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of t7ie United 
States, vol. v., p. 363. 

259 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Cruzat, the commandant of that post." The report of 
this expedition, forwarded through military channels, 
either reached Madrid more than a year after it occur- 
red, or else it was purposely held back. At any rate, 
it appeared in the Madrid Gazette of March 12, 1782, at 
the exact time it was needed to disturb the discussions 
of France, Spain, England, and America as to the ques- 
tions of boundaries, and gave a color of justice to 
Spain's demand that the line of demarcation be drawn 
so as to give her the territoiy now included within the 
States of Mississippi, Alabama, a part of Georgia, Ten- 
nessee, Kentucky, a large part of Ohio, and all of Michi- 
gan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Happily, however, 
the American commissioners ever contended for, and ulti- 
mately obtained, the Mississippi as our western boundary. 
In October, 1779, De Peyster, having turned the post 
at Michilimackinac over to Patrick Sinclair, relieved 
Lernoult at Detroit. De Peyster was nothing if not 
energetic, and in his first report to Haldimand he was 
able to announce the surprise and capture of Colonel 
Rogers's party, on their way from the falls of the Ohio 
to Fort Pitt, by the Girtys and Elliott with their Sha- 
wanese band — " a stroke that must greatly disconcert 
the rebels at Pittsburg. " ' To Captain McKee, 2 at the 
Shawanese towns, De Peyster wrote begging the discov- 
ery and return of a woman named Peggy West and her 
young daughter Nancy, both of whom had been taken 
a }^ear before, near Fort Pitt, when the father was 

1 De Peyster to Haldimand, November 1, 1779. 

3 McKee was called captain, but he had no rank. He had been in 
the Indian service for twenty-two years, and Lord Dunmore bad of- 
fered him a commission in one of the provincial battalions to be raised 
near Pittsburg ; but the commissions were intercepted by the Ameri- 
cans.— De Peyster to Haldimand, March 10, 1780. 

200 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 

killed, and the mother and two daughters were divided. 
" If, sir, it be possible to find the mother and the other 
sister," writes the commandant, " I will not spare ex- 
pense ; please therefore to employ some active people to 
go in search of them, assuring the Indians of a good 
price, and my grateful acknowledgment." One of the 
girls had been brought to Detroit, where she had found 
a friend and protector in Mrs. de Peyster ; and the heart 
of this motherly Scotchwoman had been touched by the 
child's woes. 

The plan of campaign for 1780 was for a Detroit 
party of soldiers to join the Indians in clearing the 
valley of the Miami to the Ohio, while Sinclair's Upper 
Lake Indians joined their brothers on the Wabash in 
" amusing Mr. Clark at the falls." M. Chevallier, at St. 
Joseph, reported that the Pottawatomies in that region 
had awakened from their lethargy and were ready to 
take the war-path. Unfortunately for all these fine 
plans, there spread from St. Louis throughout all the 
Indian country the report that Ireland had revolted ; 
that Jamaica had been taken by Count D'Estaing, who 
had beaten Admiral Biron ; that New York was block- 
aded by the French and Americans ; that the " Prince of 
Monfacon " was in the St. Lawrence for the siege of Que- 
bec ; that Natchez, Mobile, and Pensacola had been taken 
by M. Galvez, governor of New Orleans; that the United 
States had sent Colonel Clark to establish a considerable 
stone fort at the entrance of the Ohio River and another 
at Cahokia; and, to cap the climax, that the Empress 
of Russia appeared to be surprised that England should 
suppose that she would mix herself in any of Britain's 
troubles, 1 while the inhabitants of Artois had furnished 



1 Mr. Papin, trader at St. Louis, to Mr. Red he, his comrade at Mi 

261 



/ 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

the King of France a vessel of the line of six guns, with 
promise of a large reward to all the crew, from captain 
to the lowest sailor, if they should take another vessel 
with even one man and one gun more. All this and 
much more of like tenor the Pottawatomies heard on 
their way to Vincennes, and thereupon the greater part 
turned back; 1 and those who did go on found, to their 
chagrin, that but twenty-three Virginians occupied the 
post. The Delawares and Shawanese, however, daily 
sent into Detroit scalps and prisoners. They had a 
great field to act upon ; for a thousand families, in order 
to shun the oppression of Congress, report said, had 
gone to Kentucl<y, where they threatened to become 
formidable to both the Indians and the posts. 

In the September of 1781 the Indian agent Alexander 
McKee, in company with a detachment of Butler's Ran- 
gers and Brant's Mingo band, made a descent into Ken- 
tucky ; but when the Indians learned that Clark was un- 
likely to disturb their towns that year, they refused to 
advance to the falls of the Ohio, 2 and contented them- 
selves with petty warfare. On his return to the Upper 
Shawanese villages McKee found his helper Elliott, who 
told how his party, having discovered that the Moravian 
Indians were secretly sending intelligence to Fort Pitt 
and endeavoring to bring the Americans down upon 
them, had fallen upon these peace-loving folk and forced 
them to find new homes at Upper Sandusky. Six of 
their teachers went with them, the principal one of whom 

chilimackinac, March 23, 1780. In this letter "the United States" 
is first mentioned in Northwestern correspondence. 

1 Chevallier to , April 30, 1780. De Peyster to Haldimand, May 

17, 1780. 

8 Haldimand Papers, Captain Thompson to De Peyster, September 
26, 1781. 

262 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 

appeared to McKee to be " a Jesuitical old man, and, if 
I am not mistaken, employed by the enemy, though he 
denies it." ' McKee thought it not likely that the Mora- 
vian Indians would be friends to the English so long as 
their white teachers remained with them." 

De Peyster called the Moravian teachers before him 
at Detroit. They were accompanied by Captain Pipe, 
a Delaware, who not only spoke a good word for the 
prisoners, but added emphasis to his remarks by depos- 
iting fourteen scalps as a token of his sincerity, also call- 
ing attention to the "fresh-meat" (prisoners) he had sent 
to prepare his way. After replying to Captain Pipe 
that the universal complaint of the warriors was that 
the Moravian teachers had always kept the Americans 
informed as to the British and Indian movements, De 
Peyster closely questioned the teachers, who denied 
having given any information. 3 

The Moravians were not strictly truthful in their pro- 
fessions of innocence. On March 14, 1778, their leader, 
Zeisberger, had sent to Colonel Morgan at Fort Pitt 
a message from that Captain White Eyes, who had 
announced to Detroit the independence of the United 
States ; and in his letter he gave to the Americans in- 
formation that the Wyandots were on the war-path, to- 
gether with such like intelligence as had come to him. 
He also enclosed copies of Hamilton's proclamations— the 
one inviting loyal subjects of Great Britain to repair to 

1 Haldimand Papers, McKee to De Peyster, September 26, 1781. 

2 Haldimand was deeply chagrined over the failure of this expedi- 
tion, for he had hoped to destroy Clark's activity. He bitterly 
reproaches the Indians, though he admits that they acted as was their 
custom ; and he laments the useless expense of clothing and feeding 
such thankless allies. — Haldimand to , November 1, 1781. 

3 Haldimand Papers, Minutes of Council of November 9, 1781. 

263 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE ELAGS 

Detroit, and the other promising safe escort to such as 
might desire to "change the hardships experienced un- 
der their present masters for security and freedom un- 
der their lawful sovereign/' The proclamations were 
accompanied b} 7 a manifesto signed by eight refugees 
who, with their families, had sought shelter at Detroit. 
"White Eyes reported that he had just returned from 
Detroit, whither Colonel Morgan had sent him, and 
that nothing was to be apprehended from that quarter. 
" I observed," says this shrewd Indian, " that the gov- 
ernor wants to restore peace by making war, but I don't 
see that he is strong enough to do that." Unquestion- 
ably the Moravians did all they dared to do in warning 
the Americans ; they were settled in war's pathway, and 
they were made to suffer from both sides.' 

Had they accepted the invitation of Colonel Brod- 
liead, who, in 17S1, urged them to return to Fort Pitt, 
two frontier tragedies would have been spared. When 
the followers of John Huss were driven from Bohemia 
and Moravia, early in the eighteenth century, they had 
found a friend in the pious Count von Ziuzendorf, the 
young son of a Saxon minister of state. On his estates 
the Moravian brotherhood was organized ; and in 1711 
Zinzendorf, having been banished from Saxony, came 
to America and founded the Moravian Church at Beth- 
lehem, Pennsylvania. Successful far beyond other mis- 
sions, the Moravian churches pushed into the wilderness 
their banner of peace and good-will ; and in 176S they 
founded in the Tuscarawas and Muskingum valleys 
Schonbrunn (the shining spring), Lichtenau (the past- 
ure of light), Salem (peace), and Gnadenhiitten (the 



1 The origiuals of this correspondence are to be found in the State 
Department MSS. 

264 




\HKNT SCHUYLER 1>K PKTSTEB 

Major and Lieut. -Colonel 8th or Kimr'^ Regiment ol Foot. 1777-1793 

Colonel in the British Army. 1793 

Colonel i-t Kegimenl Dumfries Volunteers. 1790 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 

tents of grace), surrounding their huts and rude chap- 
els with smiling fields of corn. Opposed to war, these 
Christian Indians were objects of suspicion by both the 
English and the Americans. 

Part of this story David Zeisberger told to De Peys- 
ter. The little old missionary, his face seamed by the 
cares of frontier life, but still smiling and cheerful by 
reason of inward content, stood before his accuser and 
made answer for himself and his companions, Sense- 
mann and Edwards. The more rugged and defiant 
Heckewelder pleaded his own cause. The missionaries 
made a favorable impression not only on De Peyster, 
but also on the townspeople generally. Although he 
could not speak their language, Father Peter Simple, 
the priest, offered them the hospitalities of the place ; 
McKee and Elliott paid them a visit ; Protestant mer- 
chants brought children to be baptized, and some there 
were who sought them for the marriage ceremony. 
Returning to Sandusky they spent a bitter winter 
with their little flock ; but in March, 1782, the teach- 
ers and their families were ordered to Detroit, and 
were established on Chippewa lands along the banks 
of the Clinton River, near the southwest corner of the 
present city of Mt. Clemens. There they pitched anew 
their " tents of grace " and founded another Gnaden- 
hiitten. Supported through the long spring by an ample 
supply of provisions from the king's stores, the little 
band of nineteen persons was increased to half a hun- 
dred, all dwelling in well-built houses. With the end 
of the Revolution and the death of the generous Chip- 
pewa chief who had offered them hospitality, the meek 
Moravian converts were driven from their retreat by 
the heathen nations ; and on April 20, 1786, they gath- 
ered for the last time to sing songs of praise and thanks- 

265 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

giving before taking to the boats that were to bear them 
down the tortuous river and on to the Cuyahoga, whence, 
as a remnant, they returned to dwell on the banks of the 
Thames, not far from the spot where Tecumseh met his 
fate in the War of 1812. 1 

Scarcely had the Moravians reached their Michigan 
home than they learned of the terrible massacre of 
their brothers on the Muskingum. 2 Starvation having 
threatened the Sandusky settlement, a band of the 
Moravian exiles returned to the towns of Salem and 
Gnadenhiitten to gather tjie corn that had been leftrin 
the fields during the winter of 1781-82. In the March 
of the latter year a band of some eighty or ninety Ameri- 
cans \inder Colonel David Williamson surrounded the 
harmless and unsuspecting corn - gatherers, captured 
them, voted to put them to death, and in colct blood 
massacred ninet\ T -six young men, old men, ^women, and 
children belonging to a people who had actually em- 
braced the religion professed by their butchers. 

In reporting the massacre of the Moravian Indians, 
De Peyster would not pretend to say how it would op- 
erate when the Indians had overcome the consternation 
this unparalleled cruelt} T had thrown them in ; " they 

1 Captain Henry A. Ford spent much time and labor in tracing the 
history of the old Moravian mission at Mt. Clemens. See his article 
in Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, vol. x., p. 107. Zeis- 
berger died at Goshen in the Tuscarawas valley, in 1801, at the age 
of 88. Heckewelder died at Bethlehem, in 1823, at the age of 80. Of 
all the colony at Gnadenhiitten, Richard Connor remained behind. 
Born in Ireland, he came to Maryland, married a white girl who had 
been a Shawanese prisoner ; in 1774 the two had gone to the Moravian 
towns in search of their captive son, and there they became attached 
to these peaceful people and went with them to Clinton, or Huron, 
as the river was then called. The family has continued in Mt. Clem- 
ens to this day. 

2 Haldimaiul Papers, De Peyster to Haldimand, May 13, 1782. 

266 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 

daily bring me provisions and beg of me to observe 
they give aid to their enemies, who acknowledge to 
have received kind treatment ; and I am bold to say 
that, except in cases where prisoners have been too 
weak to march, few people have suffered, and we have 
had many instances of the /Indians having carried the 
sick for several days." 

Next to the capture of Hamilton, the massacre of the 
Moravian Indians proved to be the most important 
event in the Northwest during the Eevolution ; for that 
slaughter of innocents found its consequences in the 
Crawford campaign. From the English at Detroit and 
Michilimackinac, we turn now to the Americans at 
Fort Pitt. 

The abortive campaign' of General Mcintosh in 
1778-79, followed by the abandonment of Fort Lau- 
rens— the first strictly American work within the pres- 
ent State of Ohio — and then of Fort Mcintosh on the N 
Beaver, naturally caused great uneasiness along J:he 
frontiers. At the outbreak of the Revolution Fort 
Pitt was occupied by John Neville, with a small force 
of Virginia militia ; but in 1778 Neville was succeeded"' 
by Brigadier-general Edward Hand, and the post came 
into the possession of the United States. After Hand 
came Mcintosh, who in turn was succeeded by Colonel 
Brodhead, under whom, in April, 1781, the Delaware 
villages on the Muskingum were laid waste. Brodhead 
had been ordered to aid Clark in his western enter- 
prises, and in the August of 1781 a Pennsylvania force 
of one hundred and seven mounted men under Colonel 
Archibald Lochry, on its way to join the Virginia 
leader, had been ambushed at the mouth of the Great 
Miami, and all had been either killed or captured. The 
old territorial quarrels over the site of Fort Pitt now 

267 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

broke out afresh, and a dispute between Colonel Brod- 
head and his successor, Colonel Gibson, added fuel to 
the flame ; so that the post was in a state of anarchy 
when, in October, 1781, the Scotch-Irish general, Will- 
iam Irvine, of Carlisle, with the veteran Second Hrigade 
of the Pennsylvania line, appeared on the scene to bring 
order out of chaos. 1 - 

General Irvine, a post commander of the most ap- 
proved type, set about building a substantial fort, pro- 
viding for the small post at Wheeling, and drilling his 
men. Those were the days of flogging in the army, 
and " one hundred lashes well laid on " was a daily oc- 
currence as the punishment of desertion or other fla- 
grant infraction of army regulations. The fact seems 
to be that Pittsburg, in those days, was the centre of 
turbulence ami disorder; and that the Scotch-Irish liv- 
ing thereabouts were much better at gouging each 
other's eyes out in their tights, or at massacring Ind- 
ians, than they were at regular, systematic warfare 
under proper officers. As a result, there were more 
Indian forays into the neighborhood of Fort Pitt, and 
more disastrous expeditions from that post, than hap- 
pened on the Kentucky frontier. The Indians had re- 
spect for Clark, but up to this time they had no reason 
to fear the commandants at Fort Pitt, whose only suc- 
cesses had consisted in burning deserted Indian towns. 

It required no remarkable foresight on General Ir- 

1 Irvine was bom near Enniskillen, Ireland, November 3, 1T41. 
His grandfather was at the battle of the Boyne, and he was a College 
of Dublin man. and a cornet of dragoons, before he came to Pennsyl- 
vania with his brothers. Andrew and Matthew, in 1764. He was a 
colonel in the Quebec expedition of 1776, and was captured. On his 
belated exchange, in May, 17 70. he was promoted to the rank of brig- 
adier-general. For particulars of his life, see C. W. Butterrield's 
paign (Cincinnati, 1873). 
368 



T 1 i E W A R IN TU E N O R T J I W E S T 

vine's part to reach the same conclusion that Clark had 
readied four years before— that the best way to defend 
the frontier is to carry the war into the enemy's coun- 
try. An attack on Detroit, therefore, was planned, 
and. General Irvine went to Philadelphia to lay the 
matter before Congress and Washington. He left in 
command that Colonel John Gibson who put into Eng- 
lish Logan's message to Lord Dunmore. 1 

On General Irvine's return in the March of 1782 the 
Revolution was virtually at an end ; but Indian raids 
continued unabated, and. among the restless frontiers- 
men at Fort Pitt there was talk, and something more, 
of an irruption into Ohio and. the formation of an inde- 
pendent state. 

To put a stop to both of these disturbances an expe- 
dition against Sandusky" made rendezvous near the pres- 
ent site of Steubenville, in May, 1782, and on the twen- 
ty-fifth began its march of one hundred and fifty miles, 
with a force of four hundred and eighty men, organized 

1 Butterfield's Crawford's Campaign, p. 33. Gibson was born at 
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, May 23, 1740 ; be was an excellent classical 
scholar for bis day; at eighteen he was in Forbes'a expedition for the 
recovery of Fort Pitt ; after the French and Indian "War he was a 
trader of that post ; he was captured by the Indians, was adopted by 
a squaw, and was made acquainted with Indian manners, customs, 
and language; he escaped in time to enter the Dunmore expedition 
of 1774, during which the Mingo chief made his lament in language 
that Gibson translated into classical English; he served in the New 
York and New Jersey campaigns as commander of a Virginia regi- 
ment ; he was a member of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Conven- 
tion in 1790; was secretary of the Indiana from 1800 till that territory 
became a state; and on April 10, 1822, he died at his daughter's home, 
on Braddock's Field. 

2 Mr. Butterfield takes pains to prove that the Crawford expedition 
was against Sandusky, and not against the Moravian remnant, as 
Heckewelder, Hildreth, and others have asserted. See his Crawford's 
Campaign, p. 78. 

209 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

into eighteen companies under officers selected by the 
men. For commander the soldiers elected the Virgin- 
ian, William Crawford, by five majority over General 
Williamson, the leader of the ninety men who, during 
the previous March, had put to death the Moravian Ind- 
ians under circumstances of such cold-blooded cruelty as 
to induce Benjamin Franklin to believe in a hereafter of 
punishments and rewards. In youth Crawford and Wash- 
ington had been playmates ; in early manhood they 
fought together at Braddock's defeat, and marched to- 
gether with Forbes's army of reoccupation ; when war 
was over for a time it was Crawford who surveyed 
Washington's lands on the Ohio, and who, in 1770, 
acted as the latter's host and guide in the journey down 
the mouth of the Great Kanawha ; and in the Involu- 
tion the two friends were together on Long Island, in 
crossing the Delaware, and at Trenton and Princeton. 

No sooner had the Americans crossed the Ohio than 
the Indian scouts learned from a deserter that a force of 
a thousand men were advancing on the Sandusky towns. 
Immediately the chiefs despatched a runner to demand 
both ammunition and a detachment of men from De- 
troit. De Peyster was not slow to comply. On May 
15th, he called together the chiefs of the Wyandots, Pot- 
tawatomies, Chippewas, and Ottawas, and, on present- 
ing the war-belts from the Six Nations and the Shawa- 
nese, Delawares, and Mingoes, he urged them to join 
their brothers of the South in repelling the advance of 
the white men, " for it is your villages the Indians are 
coming against." De Peyster apologized for the fact 
that the strings were dry, explaining that such had been 
the desire of their brethren, who feared that if rum were 
given the savages they would "continue drunk in the 
streets," and not go to war. " Father !" reproachfully 

270 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 

cried a Huron chief, " I arise to tell you that I want 
' water ' to sharpen your axe, and I shall sing the war-song 
although one-half of my people are already killed by the 
enemy." 

Although Haldimand was not alarmed for the safety 
of Detroit, and also was opposed to yielding to the 
demands of the Six Nations and Delawares for an 
expedition to reduce Fort Pitt, yet he gave cordial 
sanction to the Sandusky expedition. " I hope," he 
writes to De Peyster, "that the melancholy event at 
Muskingum will rouse the Indians to a firm and vigor- 
ous opposition and resentment at Sandusky, or wher- 
ever they shall meet the enemy. ... I depend upon 
your exerting your utmost efforts and abilities as well 
to convince the Indians of the indispensable necessity 
there is for their resisting this shock with unanimity 
and firmness, their future existence as a people depend- 
ing on it, as in taking every possible precaution for the 
security of your post, in which I am persuaded I shall 
not be disappointed." ' Mounting a body of Rangers 
under the command of Captain Caldwell, De Peyster 
sent them, together with McKee and a number of Cana- 
dians, to support the savages. 

Marching along Wilkinson's trail, Crawford's force, 
on June 4th, reached a deserted town of the Wyandots, 
and proceeded to Upper Sandusky,' where, in his per- 
plexity, the leader called a council of war, at which it 
was decided to continue the advance during that after- 
noon. If the Indians were not encountered the army 
was to return. Meanwhile the scouts found an Indian 
trace, but did not discover the impassable swamp that 

1 Haldimand Papers. De Peyster's letter of May 14, 1782, and cor- 
respondence following. 

271 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Hanked it. Pursuing their way, the scouts met the 
Indians running towards the advancing force, and im- 
mediately fell back slowly before the on-coming sav- 
ages, sending a mounted messenger to warn the gen- 
eral. Highly elated at the prospect of battle, the men 
ran forward. From a grove in which the little band 
of Delawares endeavored to make a stand, Crawford 
dislodged them ; and when they attempted to gain 
the right of the army, Major Leet gallantly prevented. 
At this juncture the Wyandots appeared, and the Dela- 
wares slipped around to attack the Americans in the 
rear. At nightfall the still hopeful Crawford saw the 
Indians withdraw ; and all night through the Ameri- 
cans and the savages lay on their arms behind great 
fires built to guard against a night attack. With re- 
turning daylight the battle was renewed, the Ameri- 
cans maintaining their position in the island - grove, 
while all about them the Indians were concealed in the 
tall prairie -grass, the Delawares on the south and the 
Wyandots on the north. Although many of his men 
were overcome by heat and the scanty and bad water, 
and although many were wounded, Crawford was pre- 
paring for an attack in force, when suddenly the squad- 
ron of Rangers from Detroit appeared on the field. 
Attack now was changed to defence ; and while the 
officers were deliberating a band of two hundred Sha- 
wanese swept up from the south. Retreat became im- 
perative. The dead were buried and fires kindled over 
their graves ; the wounded were placed on horses, and 
at dark the force moved. The savages, uncertain 
whether the movement was an advance or a retreat, 
did not attack promptly; and although in the confu- 
sion some of the Americans rode into the swamp, yet 
at daybreak the little army, now three hundred in 

272 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 

number, had regained Upper Sandusky. Then it was 
discovered that Colonel Crawford was missing. The 
command having devolved on Williamson, that officer 
succeeded in organizing the retreat. On the 6th a 
stand was made in the present Whitestone township of 
Crawford Count} 7 , and in the midst of a pelting rain- 
storm an attack of the savages was repelled ; and on 
the site of the present town of Cresline the Indians 
ceased the pursuit. On the 17th of June the force 
reached the Mingo Bottom on the Ohio, whence they 
had set out with such high hopes twenty-three days 
before. 

At the beginning of the retreat, Colonel Crawford 
having missed his son John, his son-in-law Major 
Harrison, and his nephews Major Rose and William 
Crawford, halted to wait until they should come up. 
The army having passed without them, his wearied 
horse was unequal to the task of overtaking the fugi- 
tives, and in company with Dr. Knight and others he 
pushed on. The next day they met Captain Josh Biggs 
and Lieutenant Ashley, with whom they made camp ; 
but on the 11th of June Crawford and Knight were 
captured by a band of Delawares, Biggs and Ashley 
making their escape only to be killed the next day. 
Taken to the near-by camp of the savages, they found 
there nine prisoners. The two officers were handed 
over to the Delaware chiefs, Captain Pipe and Wingen- 
nud. Knie/ht was reserved for the torture-fire of a neigh- 
boring town, but made an almost miraculous escape. 
For Crawford a stake fifteen feet high was driven 
into the ground, and about it a fire of hickory wood 
was laid in a circle some six yards from the post. By 
way of preparation the remaining prisoners were sent 
off to be tomahawked by the squaws and small boys. 
s 273 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Then Colonel Crawford wag stripped naked, and the 
savages beat him with sticks. Next his tormentors fast- 
ened him to the stake by a short rope, and began to 
fire powder into his bruised body. From the cordon 
of flames squaws snatched coals and hot ashes to throw 
at him, until, in his agony, he walked round and round 
the stake on a pathway of fire. 

Among the spectators stood Simon Girty, who had 
often been a guest at Crawford's hospitable table on 
the Ohio. Crawford begged him to shoot and end the 
terrible agony ; but the renegade made taunting answer, 
" I have no gun." For three hours the torture continued. 
Then the brave man, the friend and companion of the 
commander-in-chief pf the American armies, fell on his 
face ; an Indian quickly rushed in and scalped him, and 
a squaw threw burning coals on his mutilated head. 
Stung into life again, he once more arose and started 
around the deadly post. But his end was at hand. 
The exhausted body dropped into the flames. 

De Peyster lamented that the murder of the Mora- 
vians, coming at a time when the Indians were almost 
weaned from cruelties, " had awakened their old custom 
of putting prisoners to the most severe tortures;" yet 
he looked upon the torture of Crawford and the mas- 
sacre of prisoners as retaliation on nearly the same 
body of troops that perpetrated the slaughter of the 
Christian Indians, and that had similar intentions upon 
Sandusky. 1 Haldimand, deeply shocked by the report 
De Peyster sent of the torture of Crawford, had " not a 
doubt that every possible argument was used to prevent 
that unhappy event, and that it alone proceeded from 



1 Haldimand Papers. De Peyster to Haldimand, June 23 and August 
18, 1782. 

274 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 

the massacre of the Moravian Indians, a circumstance 
that will not extenuate the guilt in the eyes of Con- 
gress. When you see a fit occasion, express in the 
proper terms the concern I feel at their having fol- 
lowed so base an example, and the abhorrence I have 
had throughout the war at acts of cruelty, which, until 
this instance, they have so humanely avoided." The 
correspondence between Haldimand and De Peyster 
shows that these officers of the king were sincerely im- 
pressed by the twin horrors that marked the last year 
of the Revolution in the Northwest ; and they took 
pains to put their ideas into orders directed to the 
Indians. 

Before the middle of June news came to Detroit that 
peace was likely to follow the cessation of arms which 
had taken place. On August 15th De Peyster de- 
spatched an express to Captain Caldwell and to Brant 
and McKee, operating on the ^Ohio, ordering them to 
cease from offensive work, although news had come 
that another expedition was fitting out at Fort Mcin- 
tosh and at Wheeling, " under the command of the 
blood-thirsty Colonel Williamson, who so much distin- 
guished himself in the massacre of the Christian Ind- 
ians." The messenger, however, was too late to reach 
Captain Caldwell. On August 15th that officer, with 
thirty picked Rangers and about two hundred Lake 
Indians, besides some Delawares and Shawanese, made 
an unsuccessful attack on Bryan's station, in Kentucky, 
ending in the battle of Blue Licks, at which ill-advised 
encounter Clark's county lieutenant of the Illinois, Colo- 
nel John Todd, and seventy of his command were 
killed, with a loss to their enemy of a single Ranger 
and six Indians! 

The terrible slaughter of Blue Licks (occasioned by 

275 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Major Hugh McGarry usurping leadership in spite of 
Boone's advice to await reinforcements), brought Clark 
once more to the command ; and on November 10th his 
mounted riflemen, a thousand and fifty strong, struck 
the Miami towns, burning crops, capturing prisoners, 
recapturing whites, and destroying the establishments 
of the British traders. With this attack the war of the 
Revolution ended in the Northwest. 1 

1 Haldimand Papers. De Peyster to McKee, August 6, 1782. De 
Peyster to Brigadier-general Powell, August 27th. 

For an account of the battle of Blue Licks, see Roosevelt's Win- 
ning of the West, vol. ii., p. 207. Mr. Roosevelt there gives McKee's 
and Caldwell's reports, and corrects several errors in accepted ac- 
counts. 

In a suggestive paper prepared for the "Wisconsin Historical So- 
ciety, and printed in the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Reports, 
vol. iii., the late Judge Charles I. Walker, of Detroit, was the first 
one to call the attention of historians to the valuable documents 
at Quebec, as sources of Northwestern history during the Revolu- 
tionary period; he made as careful study of these documents as 
circumstances would permit, and this led to the publication of con- 
siderable portions of the Bouquet and Haldimand Papers by the 
Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society. Judge Walker made a 
valuable collection of publications relating to the Northwest, and 
when failing eyesight forced him to give up his own studies, he 
generously placed his collection in the Detroit public library. Dr. 
W. J. Poole's chapter on "The West" from 1763 to 1783, in vol- 
ume vi. of the Narrative and Critical History of America, and An- 
drew McFarland Davis's chapter on "The Indians and the Border 
Warfare of the Revolution" in the same volume, are valuable 
not alone in themselves, but also for their references to other writ- 
ings. 

Of all writers on Western history, the most uutiring searcher for 
truth amid the multitude of legends and traditions was Mr. Con- 
sul Willshire Butterfield, who was born in Oswego County, New 
York, in 1824, and who for fifty years pursued his inquiries into 
the history of the Ohio valley. He died in South Omaha, Nebras- 
ka, in October, 1899. His biography of George Rogers Clark is yet 
to appear. 

276 



THE WAR IN THE NORTHWEST 

The war between England and America was indeed 
ended ; but for the Northwest the peace that had come 
to the Atlantic coast was long years in the future. 
The Kevolution had but rolled up the curtain on the 
tragedy that was to end only with the treaty of Ghent, 
then more than a quarter of a century distant. De 
Peyster, looking the situation squarely in the face, 
wrote to Haldimand : " I have a very difficult card to 
play at this post and its dependencies, which differs 
widely from the situation of affairs at Michilimacki- 
nac, Niagara, and others in the upper district of Can- 
ada. It is evident that the back settlers will con- 
tinue to make war upon the Shawanese, Delawares, 
and Wyandots, even after a truce shall be agreed 
to betwixt Great Britain and her revolted colonies. 
In which case, while we continue to support the Ind- 
ians with troops (which they are calling aloud for), 
or only with arms, ammunition, and necessaries, we 
shall incur the odium of encouraging incursions into 
the back settlements — for it is evident that when the 
Indians are on foot, occasioned by the constant alarms 
they receive from the enemies entering their country, 
they will occasionally enter the settlements, and bring 
off prisoners and scalps — so that while in alliance with 
a people we are bound to support, a defensive war will, 
in spite of human prudence, almost always terminate 
in an offensive one." 

The war was over. Peace meant liberation for the 
captives. At Detroit the doors of " Yankee Hall," the 
Libby Prison of the Northwest, were opened, and as 
speedily as possible De Peyster sent the captives to the 
lower country. Not all of them wished to leave. There 
were Germans who had taken the oath of allegiance to 
the king, and who were settled with their families near 

277 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Detroit or on the present Belle Isle ; there were also 
women whose children were with the Indians — Rachels 
still to be comforted ; and there were orphans who knew 
not their parents. The women and children De Peyster 
" fixed in decent houses, where they will be taken care 
of without being of the least expense to government.'" 
and he did all that lay in his power to accommodate all 
matters. 

But there was one door that could not be opened. 
In the cellar of the council-house was a room set apart 
for the deposit 3 of the scalps brought to Detroit by 
the Indians when they came to claim provisions and 
clothing, guns and knives, powder and lead, and. above 
all, rum. For the moment the forests had echoed the 
shrieks of the victims — women rushing to death in 
defence of their children, men struck down at the very 
gates of their log forts, or shot in the fields while at 
work, innocent children playing about the doorstep of 
the cabin builded in the wilderness that they might 
have a home. Their bones whitened in the forest: their 
scalps rotted in the council -house: their only memorial 
was the grandfather's tale told about the fireside Ions: 
years afterwards, when the frontier had been pushed far 
north of the Ohio and the log-cabin had given place to 
the secure farm-house set amid smiling fields. Let it be 
said in honor to the Americans that, whatever cruelties 
they may have perpetrated on the Indians, their souls 
revolted from employing savages to make war on white 
people. 

1 Hatdimand Papers. De Peyster to Powell. August 27. ITS?. 

• See also the chapter on the Revolutionary War in Silas Farmers 
History of Detroit and Michigan, a veritable storehouse of facts gath- 
ered during years of diligent research. 

378 



CHAPTER VIII 
PEACE THAT PROVES NO PEACE 

" My lords," piteously cried Lord Chatham, tottering 
on the very brink of the grave — " my lords, his Majesty 
succeeded to an empire as great in extent as its repu- 
tation was unsullied. Shall we tarnish the lustre of 
this nation by an ignominious surrender of its rights and 
fairest possessions?" With his latest breath the great 
statesman uttered his almost incoherent lamentation over 
what he believed to be the impending doom of England 
— the independence of those very colonies he himself had 
taught how to fight, and had encouraged to revolt by 
his own ringing words of freedom. Chatham had been 
in his grave three vears and a half before the surrender 
of Cornwallis at Yorktown made England understand 
that the inevitable day of separation was at hand ; but 
for a year longer still she fought in the cabinet to post- 
pone that acknowledgment of independence which suc- 
cessive defeats in the field had forced upon her. 1 

The treaty of 1763, so humiliating to France, had 
prepared that nation for the alliance with the colonies 
on which the success of the Revolution depended ; and 
the hope of ousting England from her possession of 

1 Chatham's last speech in the House of Lords was delivered April 
7, 1778; he died four days later. Yorktown was surrendered October 
19, 1781, and the preliminary articles of peace were sigued November 
30, 1782. 

279 



THE NORTHWEST CTNDER THREE FLAGS 

Gibraltar was the one thing that brought Spain into the 
oontest. From the very day that Now France disap- 
peared from the map of America the French minister 
Ohoiseu] had pursued the policy of encouraging the 
colonies to revolt and to form an independent nation, 
by which means he hoped and expected to curb and 
restrain England's overmastering power on the seas. 
bonis XVI., coming to the throne at the very time 
when the port of Boston was closed by British orders, 
ohose to forget that the American colonists were re- 
volting at the divine right of kings, and in his eager- 
ness to punish the hereditary enemy of France and to 
curb the commercial supremacy o( England, he was ready 
to furnish the Meets, the soldiers, and the money needed 
to insure the success of the new nation. When it came 
to the peace negotiations, however, the conflicting in- 
terests of England and France and Spain all had to be 
considered before the United States could take a posi- 
tion among the nations of the world. 1 

Throughout the Revolution, Franklin, as the repre- 
sentative of the United States, had occupied a position 
of first importance at Paris, where he had acted not 
only as diplomatic agent, but had also negotiated loans 
to the amount of 51,000,000 francs, had disbursed the 
funds so obtained, and had directed the little navy oper- 
ating in European waters. After the evacuation of Bos- 

1 For a discussion of motives see the introduction to Wharton's 
Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence ef the United States. Dr. 
YVhartou's introduction is especially valuable for the light it throws 
on the various actors iu the diplomacy of the Revolution. Joliu Jay's 
article on the peace negotiations, in vol. vii. of the Narrative and 
Critical History of America, shows the various t listings and turnings 
involved in the prolonged discussions, and especially illustrates the 
reluctance with which England came to the acknowledgment of inde- 
pendence. 

380 



PEACE THAT PROVES NO PEACE 

ton and the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1778 
had proved the ability of the colonists to cope with P^ng- 
land, an open alliance with France, also negotiated by 
Franklin, gave to this country a national existence, at 
least so far as that nation was concerned. Early in 
1779, when the hope of peace seemed not unreasonable. 
Congress made John Adams a commissioner to negoti- 
ate a peace ; and afterwards, at the instance of France, 
associated with him others, of whom Franklin and Jay 
bore an active part in the actual negotiations. It is not 
necessary here to go into the intricate and delicate sub- 
ject of the prolonged negotiations that led up to the 
treaty of 1783; but for present purposes it is sufficient 
to outline the general attitude of the four nations in 
interest. 

Congress naturally took a large view of the rights 
and the boundaries which should accrue to the United 
States by virtue of having prosecuted a successful war 
against England. After the recognition of the inde- 
pendence of the United States, which was always of 
first consideration, Congress stipulated for a participa- 
tion in the Newfoundland fisheries, for the free naviga- 
tion of the Mississippi, and for the enlarged boundaries 
of the Great Lakes on the north and the Mississippi on 
the west. These demands were afterwards modified both 
in terms, and especially by the instruction that the 
American commissioners were not to take action with- 
out consulting France, a restriction always embarrassing 
and well calculated to defeat all efforts at successful 
negotiation had the commissioners adhered to it. 

France, willing to humiliate England, was quite un- 
willing to give to the new nation the room and the 
opportunity to grow ; and in pursuit of this policy the 
French minister Yergennes set on foot an intrigue with 

281 



THE NORTHWEST LTNDER THREE FLAGS 

England to keep the United States out of the fisheries 
and to confine the boundaries to the Ohio, if not to the 
Alleghanies, leaving to England all of Canada as enlarged 
under the Quebec act of 1774. It was Vergennes's ob- 
ject to prolong negotiations until the purposes of Spain 
had been accomplished ; for he had agreed, as the price 
of Spain's help against England, first to make no peace 
that did not involve the surrender of Gibraltar; and, 
secondly, to have Spain free to exact from the United 
States a renunciation of the navigation of the Missis- 
sippi, and of the entire Northwest from the St. Law- 
rence to the Alleghanies. 

Spain, in order to protect her interests in the Philip- 
pines and in the hope of recovering the key to the 
Mediterranean, gave to France for the use of the United 
States a million francs, by way of encouraging the colo- 
nies in their struggle against England ; but when the 
colonies coalesced into a nation, Spain immediately 
began to consider the danger to her own North Ameri- 
can possessions that would result from building up a 
strong government east of the Mississippi. Then, hav- 
ing been drawn into the war by France, Spain deter- 
mined to seize the opportunity to recover the ground she 
had lost in the Seven Years' War and again to become 
a nation of the first class. Grudgingly she gave inef- 
fective aid to the United States, expecting at the end 
to profit at their expense. 

In Prussia Frederick the Great was willing to aid 
America up to the point of getting into a war with 
England ; in Eussia Catharine II. welcomed the war as 
an opportunity for her to build up a neutral commerce, 
but she had no sympathy with the object of the Ameri- 
cans to form a new nation; and the same state of affairs 
that existed in Russia prevailed also in the Netherlands. 

282 




JUI1> AUAMs 



PEACE THAT PROVES NO PEACE 

The surrender at Yorktown having proved to Eng- 
land the futility of continuing the struggle with the 
United States, the House of Commons, on March 4, 
1782, voted to consider as enemies to the king and 
country those who should attempt the further prosecu- 
tion of the war with America : and within a fortnight 
thereafter Lord North gave way to Rockingham, Avhose 
cabinet was made up largely of the friends of America, 
including Fox and Burke. The peace negotiations, how- 
ever, were conducted mainly by Lord Shelburne, first 
as the colonial secretary and afterwards as the leader of 
the ministry. Without attempting too close an analy- 
sis of the complex character of Shelburne, it is enough 
to say that after long dodging the humiliating question 
of acknowledging the independence of the United States 
as the preliminary step to a treaty, he was slowly but 
surely educated into a condition of high esteem for the 
character and abilities of the American commissioners ; 
and in the end he was persuaded that it was for the best 
interests of England herself to give to the new nation 
such rights and boundaries as would insure the develop- 
ment of a prosperous nation with which Great Britain 
might trade on fair terms. He was led to these con- 
clusions not only by the straightforward dealings of Jay 
and Adams and Franklin, but also by the duplicity of 
Yergennes. 

Of the three American peace commissioners, Franklin 
was seventy years old when, in 1776, he was elected 
commissioner to France, and he was then moved to 
speak of himself as a remnant — a fag-end. Yet by his 
profound knowledge, his wide experience at court, and 
his adroit address, he had succeeded in performing ser- 
vices such as no other man in America could have ren- 
dered. For the young monarch of France he felt almost 

283 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

a paternal regard ; and by appealing to the chivalrous 
instincts of both king and queen he had well supple- 
mented his appeals to the lower motives of advantage 
and revenge entertained by Yergennes. He it was who 
first undertook to deal separately and secretly with Shel- 
burne, proposing to give compensation to the Tories in 
return for the cession of all of Canada ; but as negotia- 
tions progressed ho was inclined to lay much stress on 
the instruction to consult France, and it was with genu- 
ine reluctance that he yielded to his colleagues when 
they concluded that the time had come to accommodate 
matters first with England. That he did so conclude 
was not his least service to his country. 

Utterly unlike Franklin was John Adams, a most 
zealous patriot, in whom tact and judgment were often 
wanting. Lacking in the spirit of accommodation, 
he never could have accomplished all that Franklin, 
secured ; and yet his persistency and his undoubted 
genius for affairs political enabled him to obtain much. 
It was Adams's rough aggressiveness that caused the 
French minister Luzerne to have Congress associate 
with him as peace commissioners Franklin, Jay, Lau- 
rens, and Thomas Jefferson — a division of responsibility 
entirely agreeable to Adams. "While Franklin and Jay 
were spending the better part of the year 1782 in nego- 
tiations with Oswald, the British representative, Adams 
successfully negotiated a treaty with Holland ; and, 
fresh from this diplomatic triumph in October, he ar- 
rived in Paris to give to Jay the full support of his ex- 
perience and decision of character. Friendly to France, 
indeed, he had no particular affinity for that country ; 
hence it violated no feelings on Adams's part to come 
to terms with England w-hile Vergennes was resting 
in fancied security that he had delayed indefinitely 

284 



</,:, ' ~& 



'-*» 



'1*&: 



-^^ 

mk 




LOUD SHELBUBNE 



PEACE THAT PROVES NO PEACE 

the negotiations he professed himself anxious to ex- 
pedite. 

From April 6 to June 23, 1782, Franklin and Oswald, 
the British commissioner, were trying to arrive at some 
satisfactory basis of negotiations. Jefferson was in 
America ; Laurens was a prisoner in the Tower of Lon- 
don ; Adams was busy in Holland. Satisfied that Jay 
was accomplishing nothing in Spain, Franklin called to 
his aid the young New York gentleman who, although 
only in his thirty-seventh } r ear, had already achieved no- 
table success as a member of Congress and as the chief- 
justice of the supreme court of his native State. Born of 
a Huguenot family, distinguished alike for social graces 
and for legal attainments, Jay was at once easy of ap- 
proach, familiar with the usages of society, and strenuous 
in his Americanism. From his coming to Paris, late in 
June, till the signing of the preliminary articles of peace 
on the 30th of November, Jay pulled the laboring oar 
in all the negotiations. He it was who dared to disre- 
gard the instruction of Congress to deal only with the 
consent of France, who insisted on making the acknowl- 
edgment of independence a prerequisite to negotia- 
tions, and who stood out for the widest possible bounda- 
ries and the most ample rights to the fisheries and the 
navigation of the Mississippi. He persuaded Shelburne 
that it was for the interest of England to make a treaty 
that would be not only just but also conciliatory ; and 
all this he accomplished with the hearty concurrence of 
Adams, who had but a month's part in the negotiations, 
and of Franklin, whose attachment to and confidence in 
Jay were shown afterwards by the fact that Franklin 
made Jay his executor.' 



"Our worthy friend, Mr. Jay, returns to his country like a bee to 
285 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

The European fear of wide American boundaries was 
entirely natural. The depopulation of Europe, the loss 
of the fur-trade, the diversion of the product of the 
mines of New Mexico, and the use of the fisheries as a 
commercial and naval training-school, all were reasons 
impelling France and Spain to set the Alleghanies as 
the barrier which the too-enterprising Americans should 
not be allowed to cross ; and in order to accomplish 
their purpose, these two nations did not scruple secretly 
to seek the participation of England. Employing as a 
medium of communication Vaughan, an intimate friend 
of Shelburne, Jay despatched to London the draft of a 
treaty comprising boundaries, the navigation of the Mis- 
sissippi, and the fisheries. England was anxious to keep 
the back country as a means of settling the loyalists, 
or at least of compensating them for their losses by the 
sale of these lands ; but on this point Shelburne was not 
strenuous. The two points on which he was decided 
were the payment of debts owed to British merchants 
by Americans, and the re-establishment of the Tories in 
their privileges and properties. On the first point there 
was no dispute ; on the second, the commissioners were 
powerless to do more than to agree that Congress would 
recommend such action to the several States, which 
alone had the jurisdiction over matters of internal 
policy. 

The repeated illnesses of Dr. Franklin caused the bur- 
den of the peace arrangements to fall on the shoulders of 
his younger and more vigorous colleague, John Ja}% and 
although Oswald still regarded Franklin as the chief of 
the negotiators, he found that Jay's clear-cut and def- 

his hive, with both legs loaded with merit and honor."— Adams to 
Barclay, quoted in George Pellew's John Jay, American Statesmen 
Series, p. 228. 

286 



PEACE THAT PROVES NO PEACE 

inite demands must be met, because Franklin was deter- 
mined to support his colleague at every point. Jay's 
experience in Spain had aroused a natural resentment 
towards that nation ; and at the same time he had no 
such friendly feeling for France as had been engendered 
in Franklin by years of successful negotiation with Ver- 
gennes, and by that subtle flattery which the people of 
France willingly accorded to the distinguished scientific 
attainments, the profound knowledge, and the affable 
manners of the representative of the United States. 1 
Towards England Jay's feelings were mixed. He was 
in sympathy with the best political thought of that 
country, but was not in sympathy with the government. 
Oswald found him polite, easy, well informed, but de- 
cidedly independent ; and was disappointed in meeting 
such decided ideas so firmly held. In the end, how- 
ever, the British negotiator came under Jay's influence, 
and became an earnest advocate with Shelburne and 
Townshend of Jay's views. 

Of all the matters comprised in the peace treaty, there 
is no more obscure subject than that of the Northwest 
boundaries ; and in the printed correspondence almost 
nothing is to be found to throw light on that perplexing 
question. In the manuscript correspondence that passed 
between Oswald and his principals, however, the matter 
is elucidated. 2 When the treaty of 1763 was proposed 
as a basis of negotiation, Jay maintained that Great 

1 For a brilliant exposition of Franklin's position in Paris, see Pro- 
fessor George W. Green's article on "The Diplomacy of the Revolu- 
tion," in the Atlantic Monthly, vol. xv., p. 576. Professor Green does 
scant justice to Adams, and makes almost no mention of Jay, a fact 
which indicates the lack of available information on this subject 
in 1865. 

! This correspondence, known as the Landsdowne Papers, is in the 
Library of Congress and in the State Department. 

287 






THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Britain had treated France with too little consideration 
at that time ; and on Oswald's reply that it ill became 
an American to object to the enforced surrender of 
Canada, by means of which cession the American fron- 
tiers were protected from incursions of savages insti- 
gated by France, Jay retorted that the colonies were 
then a part of the British domain, and were therefore 
to be protected in common with other portions of the 
realm. What Jay now proposed was the cession of all 
that portion of Canada newly included in the Quebec 
act of 1774 — that is, all the territory west of the Ottawa 
River and south of the lands of the Hudson Bay Com- 
pany, and his argument was easy to be comprehended. 
The back lands, he said, were already occupied in part 
by the Americans, who were pushing over the moun- 
tains into that fertile territory ; and for England to 
retain the Ohio country would simply be to invite 
trouble. Moreover, he pointed out a way in which Eng- 
land, while giving up the territory, could command its 
trade. Oswald professed anxiety over the honorable 
withdrawal of the British garrisons at New York and 
Charleston : let England use these troops to conquer 
the Spanish post at the mouth of the Mississippi ; the 
United States would much prefer England to France as 
a neighbor ; then with the free navigation of the great 
river, Great Britain would be able to control the two 
outlets of the back lands — New Orleans and Quebec. 
This reasoning seemed good to Oswald, for he was con- 
vinced that the plan of using the Ohio lands to furnish 
a fund to make good the losses of British hjyalists and 
to pay for American property wantonly destroyed by 
the British was past hoping for. So he urged Jay's 
reasoning on his government ; and in the dearth of 
authentic maps and other information in regard to 

288 




HENRY LAURENS 



PEACE THAT PROVES NO PEACE 

the Ohio, the wide boundaries of the Northwest were 
agreed to. 1 

The American commissioners offered a choice between 
the line passing through the middle of the Great Lakes, 
or the forty-fifth degree of latitude, which latter line 
would have left in Canada Lake Superior, Minnesota, 
and the northern half of Michigan, while it would have 
given to us the province of Ontario and all of Lakes 
Erie and Ontario. Fortunately for both parties, the 
more rational line was chosen and marked on Mitchell's 
map ; and on paper, at least, the two nations divided the 
navigation privileges of the great inland seas, and, with- 
out knowledge of the exact conditions, parted their re- 
spective territories along the Grand Portage from Lake 
Superior to the sources of the Mississippi. The triumph 
of Ja}^ and his colleagues in obtaining these boundaries 
can best be appreciated when it is understood how per- 
sistently Yergennes, acting for both France and Spain, 
pushed the Spanish claims not alone at Paris, but also 
at London, and even at Philadelphia ; and with what 
plausibility he argued that Spain should control the 
Mississippi, that the country between the Alleghanies 
and the Ohio should be maintained as Indian territory, 
under the control of Spain, and that Canada should 
reach south to the Ohio. Possibly England preferred to 
give up to the United States territory which she might 
hope to regain, rather than to yield to France what she 
would have to pay for by other and more important sur- 
renders elsewhere. Be that as it may, the preliminary 

1 See Oswald's letters of August 8, September 2, and October 2, 
1782. Also tbe letters in regard to Canada in vol. viii. of Wharton's 
Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution, and a very instructive 
article on " The International Boundary Line of Michigan," by Anna 
May Soule, in Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, vol. xxvi. 
t 289 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

treaty was agreed to on November 30, 1782, with the 
saving provision that the peace should not become 
effectual until England had come to terms with France 
and Spain. 

There was but one sentiment in regard to the treaty. 
D'Aranda wrote from Paris to his master, the King of 
Spain : " The federal republic is born a pigmy. A day 
will come when it will be a giant, even a colossus, for- 
midable to these countries. Liberty of conscience, the 
facility for establishing a new population on immense 
lands, as well as the advantage of the new government, 
will draw thither farmers and artisans from all nations. 
In a few years we shall watch with grief the tyrannical 
existence of this same colossus." The chagrined Ver- 
gennes wrote to his secretary and companion in intrigue, 
Ray venal, that England had rather bought a peace than 
made one ; to which Ray venal replied that the treaty 
seemed to him a dream. Luzerne wrote from Philadel- 
phia to Vergennes that the boundary from Lake Supe- 
rior to the sources of the Mississippi had surpassed all 
expectation. It gave the Americans four forts they had 
found it impossible to capture. Lands nearer the coast 
were already beginning to depreciate in value, owing to 
the new acquisitions ; and that there was a belief that 
in pushing their possessions as far as the Lake of the 
Woods, the plenipotentiaries were preparing for their 
remote posterity a communication with the Pacific. 
Such words now seem prophecy ; then they were but 
the legitimate deductions of statesmen. 

A characteristic fate overtook the treaty in the British 
Parliament. Fox and North having combined to drive 
Shelburne out of power for making such a treaty, the 
new ministry sent Hartley to Paris to " perfect and es- 
tablish the peace, friendship, and good understanding so 

290 



PEACE THAT PROVES NO PEACE 

happily commenced by the provisional articles"; and 
after intermittent negotiations these same provisional 
articles were adopted on September 3, 1783, as the de- 
finitive treaty between England and America. In Con- 
gress the negotiators were praised for their achievement, 
but were blamed for not consulting France ! 

In opposing the treaty in the House of Lords, Wal- 
singham had asserted that the province of Canada had 
been made insecure, the fur -trade lost, several hun- 
dred million acres were ceded, and faith was broken 
with the Indians ; and Lord Townshend deplored the 
fact that some one from Canada had not been brought 
in to arrange the matter of the boundaries. There was 
good reason to believe that the question of the North- 
western boundaries had not been well considered by the 
British ; but they had made the treaty after due con- 
sideration and they were morally bound to live up to it. 

Early in the autumn of 1782 Haldimand, having re- 
ceived orders from Shelburne to discourage hostile 
measures on the part of the Indians, and as much as 
possible to draw them from the American frontiers, in- 
structed the commanders under him to carry out those 
orders ; but to the Honorable Thomas Townshend he 
wrote that the safety of the province of Canada depend- 
ed on the way in which the Indians should be managed. 
The savages, he said, had been great sufferers by reason 
of the war ; from ease and affluence the Mohawks had 
been reduced to wanderers ; and the Indians generally 
had so perpetually harassed the Americans that for 
them nothing short of abandoning England would se- 
cure a reconciliation with the United States. " Fore- 
seeing the possibility of the Americans becoming an 
independent powerful people and retaliating severely 
upon them, they reproach us with their ruin." So long 

291 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

as the Six Nations remained faithful, Oswego, the key 
to Canada, was in security ; but even the neutrality of 
those tribes would cause the gravest apprehension. On 
the friendship of the western Indians depended the 
safety of the trade and posts at Detroit and in the 
vicinity; so that the expense attending the Indian al- 
liance, although enormous, must be borne. That "was 
no time to retrench. 1 And again, two days later, Haldi- 
mand urged upon Townshend the absolute necessity 
that Niagara and Oswego be annexed to Canada; evi- 
dently he had no thought of the surrender of Detroit 
and Mackinac. His letters, however, came too late to be 
effective in the negotiation of the treaty, but his views 
were enforced in spite of the treaty, as will be seen. 

It was small wonder that Ilaldimand was anxious to 
preserve the fur-trade ; for the traffic in peltry was then, 
as it always had been, the life-blood of Canada. In 
1765, two years after the massacre at Michilimackinac, 
the first English adventurer started northward from 
that post, only to have his canoes plundered by the 
Indians about Kainy Lake ; nor was he more successful 
the next year; but in 1767 the traders penetrated be- 
yond Lake Winnipeg, and, so far as the Indians were 
concerned, the battle was won. Competition, far from 
being the life of trade, became its bane, until the Fro- 
bishers combined with the other great Montreal house 
of Todd & McGill, and in 1774 the new company pushed 
its posts into territories unknown even to the French. 
At the date of the definitive treaty there were but 
twelve different interests engaged in the northern 
trade, and when the new boundaries were made known 
these twelve combined to form the Northwest Company, 

1 Haldimand to Townshend, October 23, 1782. 
292 



PEACE THAT PROVES NO PEACE 

in order to guard against American encroachments. The 
United States treaty commissioners had insisted on 
drawing the boundary-line through the Grand Portage 
of Lake Superior, then the only known water communi- 
cation to the Lake of the Woods, and hence the ke} 7 to 
the rich fur country of the north. To discover another 
convenient passage wholly within British lines became 
the first object of the monopoly, and to this end they 
sent out a strong exploring party under Umfreville and 
Venance St. Germain. 

Even in 1784 the annual business of the [Northwest 
Company amounted to £50,000, as the original cost of 
furs. Early in May, ninety long canoes, each of four 
tons burden and each navigated by eight or ten men, set 
out from Montreal bound for the Lake of the Woods. 
On reaching Michilimackinac their stock of provisions 
was replenished and off they paddled for the north shore 
of Lake Superior. There the goods were transferred to 
canoes carrying perhaps a ton and a half and navigated 
by four or five men especially trained for the combined 
work on stream and portage. Starting from the Por- 
tage early in July, two hundred and fifty bush-rangers 
made their way even to Lake Athabasca and Great 
Slave Lake, and throughout the entire country within a 
thousand miles or more from Lake Superior. Often 
provisions would fail and Indians be hard to come upon ; 
then the tortures of hunger would bring men face to 
face with death, and not infrequently the close-follow- 
ing wolves would get their expected prey. 1 Such 
dangers and such hazards made the bottle pass quickly 
and the song wax hilarious when these forest-trampers 

1 Memorial of Benjamin and Joseph Frobislier to General Haldi- 
maud, October 4, 1784. — Canadian Archives, 1890, p. 50. Also James 
McGill to Henry Hamilton, ibid., p. 56. 

293 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

went into winter quarters and gathered about the great 
pine fires that defied the mercury - freezing cold and 
the high-piled snow. Such were the beginnings of the 
great Northwest Company, whose partners, making 
their annual voyage to Fort William, near the Grand 
Portage, ascended the mighty rivers in canoes freighted 
with every luxury known to civilization, and equipped 
with servants and cooks to serve banquets in the great 
hall of the council-house, that was hung with the richest 
of furs and the mightiest trophies of the chase. Opu- 
lence is a word that seems to belong to the Indies, but 
the opulence of the Lake Superior fur-trade in the closing 
days of the eighteenth century can be compared only 
with the opulence of the Lake Superior copper-trade in 
the closing years of the nineteenth. 1 

Great as was the fur-trade in the upper country, in 
value more than half of the furs came from countries 
within the new boundaries of the United States ; and 
Montreal had practically the monopoly of the trade 

1 Compare the opening chapters of Irving's Astoria. The Boston 
and New York owners of copper-mines in Lake Superior are worthy 
successors of the Frobishers and the McTavishes of other days. 

During a visit to Sault Ste. Marie, in October, 1899, I was enter- 
tained by Mr. Clergue, at his home in a blockhouse built on the 
foundations of a similar structure erected by the Northwest Fur Com- 
pany, on the Canadian side of the rapids. In these closing days of 
the nineteenth century Mr. Clergue and the American capitalists whom 
he represents are realizing the dreams of the seventeenth and eigh- 
teenth centuries. The trade with Cathay that eluded Nicolet is now 
maintained by the daily shipments of wood-pulp to Japan ; the copper 
that Joliet was unable to discover has at last been found, and with it 
nickel and iron ; Radisson's overland path to Hudson Bay is being tra- 
versed by the Algoma Central railroad, now building ; and the waters 
of St. Mary's River are being harnessed to build up a great manufact- 
uring centre. Meanwhile the largest tonnage kuown to any waterway 
in the world annually passes to and from Lakes Superior and Huron. 

294 



PEACE THAT PROVES NO PEACE 

from the St. Lawrence to the Ohio and the Mississippi. 
The Canadians rightly judged that inasmuch as the fur 
market was London and China, the United States would 
not be able to compete in this trade ; and this estimate 
proved true until, in the person of John Jacob Astor, 
America was to have a merchant who could command 
trade in both London and China, who could maintain 
commercial rivalry at Mackinac even with the North- 
west Company, and whose enterprise in the wilderness 
helped the United States to acquire by discovery and 
settlement the title to the Oregon country. 

Haldimand, as a part of his plan for keeping control 
of the fur-trade, had forbidden building or navigating 
private vessels on the Great Lakes ; because he conceived 
that, were the furs not carried in king's vessels, they 
would speedily find their way through the United States 
to tide -water. As may be supposed, this prohibition 
met with vigorous remonstrance not only from the 
Northwest Company, but also from the merchants of 
Detroit, and others who found their business almost 
ruined by lack of vessels and the usual naval disposition 
to take plenty of time to go from place to place. The 
merchants, however, got no satisfaction either from Hal- 
dimand or from his dual successors, General St. Leger 
and Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton. 1 

So soon as Sir Guy Carleton 2 had announced to Gen- 
eral "Washington that England had concluded a peace 
with France, Spain, and Holland, Congress authorized 

1 See correspondence in Canadian Archives, 1890, p. 63 et seq. 

* Carleton to Washington, April 6, 1784. The documents relating 
to the attempts to get possession of the posts are given in connection 
with the message of the President of the United States of December 5, 
1793. There is a Philadelphia and a London print of these documents. 
See also American State Papers, Foreign Relations, vol. i., p. 181. 

295 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

the commander-in-chief to make the necessary arrange- 
ments with the British commanders for receiving the 
posts at Detroit, Michilimackinac, Erie, Niagara, Os- 
wego, Oswegatchie, Point an Fer, and Dutchman's 
Point, occupied by the British and situated within the 
new boundaries of the United States. Thereupon 
Washington sent Baron Steuben to Quebec to arrange 
for the surrender. When, on August S, 17S3, Steuben 
met General Haldimand at Sorel, the British com- 
mander, with his customary suavity, made answer to 
the American demand, that his orders related solely to 
a cessation of hostilities, and that he had obeyed them 
to the letter, even to the extent of restraining the sav- 
ages from committing the least hostile act; but that 
until he received explicit orders to turn over the posts, 
he conceived it to be his duty as a soldier to take no 
step in that direction. 1 Nor was Governor Clinton, of 
New York, more successful 2 when, during the next year, 
he endeavored to obtain possession of Fort Niagara. 
Still a third attempt was made by Secretary of War 
Knox, who, in the July of the same year, sent to Quebec 
one of the brightest and most successful of the younger 
officers of the Revolution, Lieutenant-Colonel William 
Hull ; but again Haldimand pleaded his want of author- 
ity, 3 and there the army officials dropped the matter. 

In so far as Haldimand himself was concerned, he 
acted as any prudent general would do in the absence 



1 American State Papers. Foreign Relations, vol. i., p. 181 ct scq. 
Steuben to Haldimand, August 3, 1TS3 ; Haldimand to Sleuben, 
August 13. 1783. and Steuben's report to Washington. 

- Ibid. Clinton to Haldimand, March 19, 1784, and Haldimand to 
Clinton, May 10,1784, 

' Tbid. Hull to Haldimand, July 13, 1784, and Haldimand to Knox, 
July 10. 1784. 

09t'. 



PEACE THAT PROVES NO PEACE 

of definite instructions; but it is evident that, aside from 
the lack of positive orders, he was moved by his own 
personal knowledge of the enormous loss to British fur 
interests involved in the surrender of the posts. These 
facts are made evident by Hald inland's instructions to 
his successor, Brigadier General Barry St. Leger, to 
whom he wrote that he had thought it his duty " uni- 
formly to oppose the different attempts made by the 
American States to get possession of the posts in the 
upper country until his Majesty's orders for that pur- 
pose shall be received, and my conduct upon that occa- 
sion having been approved, I have only to recommend 
to you a strict attention to the same." l 

On the arrival in Philadelphia of George Hammond, 
the first minister plenipotentiary of Great Britain to the 
United States, Secretary Jefferson promptly called his 
attention to the seventh article of the definitive treaty 
of peace, wherein it was stipulated that "his Britannic 
Majesty should, with all convenient speed, withdraw all 
his armies, garrisons, and fleets from the said United 
States, and from every post, place, and harbor within 
the same." Hammond rejoined that the posts were held 
because of the failure of the United States to secure 
from the several States the restitution of all confiscated 
estates, rights, and properties belonging to British sub- 
jects. To this Mr. Jefferson replied at great length to 
show that the States had acted in a spirit of concilia- 
tion towards British subjects, and that the treaty sim- 
ply bound Congress to recommend such a course, that 
body having (as was clearty understood by the treaty- 
makers and by Parliament) no authority to compel the 

1 Canadian Archives, 1890, p. xxxii. Mr. Douglas Brymner, archi- 
vist, discusses the whole subject with his customary candor and ac- 
curate knowledge. 

997 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

States so to act. In any event, Jefferson argued, Great 
Britain was not justified in exercising jurisdiction over 
the country and inhabitants in the vicinity of the posts, 
and in excluding citizens of the United States from nav- 
igating " even on our side of the middle line of the 
rivers and lakes established as a boundary between the 
two nations," and thus " intercepting us entirely from 
the commerce of furs with Indian nations to the north- 
ward, a commerce which has ever been of great impor- 
tance to the United States, not only for its intrinsic 
value, but as it was a means of cherishing peace with 
those Indians and of superseding the necessity of that 
expensive warfare we have been obliged to carry on 
with them during the time those posts have been in 
other hands." ' 

Haldimand's apprehensions as to the results that must 
follow from the transfer of the sovereignty of the Ind- 
ian country from England to the United States were 
entirely justified. Whether from ignorance or from 
carelessness, England had neglected to provide for her 
Indian allies, who had devoted themselves to her cause 
with such remorseless brutality as to inspire in Chatham 
feelings of repulsion that he poured forth in invective 
never surpassed even on this side of the Atlantic. In 
so far as he was able, Haldimand undertook to repair 
this neglect by seating the ruined Mohawks on the 
Grand River, that flows into Lake Erie some forty miles 
above the Falls of Niagara ; but such a solution must of 
necessity be partial and unsatisfactory. Fortunately, 
however, Washington and Schuyler took up the sub- 
ject with Congress, and attempted to arrange matters 

1 American State Papers, Foreign Relations, vol. i. , p. 181. Jeffer- 
son to Hammond, November 29, 1791. 

298 



PEACE THAT TROVES NO PEACE 

on the basis of blotting out the remembrance of the 
past hostility of the savages, and placing them under 
the care of the government of the United States, instead 
of leaving them to the mercies of the several States. In 
pursuance of this object, on October 22, 178-i, the treaty 
of Fort Stanwix was negotiated by Oliver Wolcott, 
Richard Butler, and Arthur Lee with the Six Nations ; 
and although the young chief Red Jacket was bitterly 
opposed to the surrender of lands, the more astute chief 
Corn-planter threw the weight of his age and experi- 
ence into the scale in favor of the Americans. Unfort- 
unately for our country, while this treaty was being ne- 
gotiated, Brant, the great chief of the Six Nations, was 
in Quebec for the purpose of securing title to the British 
grant of twelve hundred square miles on the Grand 
River; and when he learned of the negotiations he not 
only opposed the results, but immediately he visited the 
western and Lake Indians to form a confederacy for 
the protection of the Indian lands as far south as the 
Ohio. The inception of this plan seems to have been 
entirely with Brant ; its support came from England, 
not quickly, or as a matter of high official policy, but 
slowly, increasingly, and by the action of subordinates 
on the ground. 1 

Having engaged the northern and western tribes to 
act together, Brant set sail for England to obtain from 
the crown compensation for the losses incurred by the 
Mohawks in their support of the British during the 
Revolution ; and his success created one more tie that 
bound the Indians to the cause of England. Arriving 

1 Stone's Life of Joseph Brant gives the best connected account of 
the intrigues and negotiations from the treaty of 1783 to 1790. It is 
to be read in connection with the correspondence in the Haldimand 
Papers. 

299 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

in England in the December of 1785, Brant received a 
welcome such as that country ever accords to a foreign 
sovereign, no matter what his color or how limited his 
sovereignty. "With many of the officers he was already 
acquainted; and king, queen, and prince, statesman and 
wit, men of fashion and ladies of quality, all gave him 
welcome. Nor did he prove an unworthy representative 
of the New World. Declining to kiss the hand of George 
IIL, he professed entire willingness to perform such hom- 
age to the queen. Wiien at a masked-ball a Turkish diplo- 
mat attempted to feel of the texture of his paiuted nose,, 
supposed to be false, Brant indulged his native Indian 
humor by giving vent to a war-whoop that curdled the 
blood in the dancers, and sent them fleeing before the 
gleaming tomahawk of whose prowess they had heard 
with horror. On his coming he was met by De Peys- 
ter ; he was dined by Burke, Fox, and Sheridan ; the 
Prince of Wales showed him the sights of the town ; 
Haldimand did him honor in army circles ; and Sir Guy 
Carleton, then on the point of returning to America, did 
not fail to cultivate the lion of the town, whose roar he 
was afterwards to invoke for purposes of state. Return- 
ing to this country in December. 1786, Brant called the 
chiefs of the Six Nations and of the western and Lake 
Indians to a council. 

The first ice of winter was sealing the channels be- 
tween the islands at the mouth of the Detroit, when, in 
the November of 1786, the United Indian Nations 
gathered for their first confederate council in the 
Huron village near the head of Lake Erie. The pur- 
pose of this most dignified and important assembly was 
to prepare an address to their " brethren of the thirteen 
United States of America." With absolute directness 
this state paper declares the disappointment of the Ind- 

300 



PEACE THAT PROVES NO PEACE 

ians after having experienced three years of the peace 
made between the United States and England. They 

had hoped for a lasting friendship between themselves 
and their "oldest brethren.*' They had received two 
agreeable messages from the United State;, and at the 
same time had been asked by the king whose war they 
had been engaged in to remain quiet. They now gave 
notice that in future no council would be held legal un- 
less the entire confederacy gave its assent; and that 
they were ready to make a lasting treaty of peace, and 
for that purpose would meet the American commission* 
ers in the spring, " to bury in oblivion the mischief that 
had happened, and speak to each other in the style of 
friendship." There was one condition. " Brothers," 
says the message, " we again request of you, in the most 
earnest manner, that you will order your surveyors and 
others that march on lands, to cease from crossing the 
Ohio until we shall have spoken to you; because the mis- 
chief that has recently happened has always originated 
in that quarter. We shall likewise preserve our people 
from going over until that time." 

Such was the ultimatum. Then came this warning: 
"Brothers, it will be owing to your arrogance if this 
laudable plan which we so earnestly wish for is not 
carried into execution. In that case the result will be 
very precarious, and if fresh ruptures ensue, we are 
we will be able to exculpate ourselves, and most assured- 
ly, with our united force, be obliged to defend those immu- 
nities which the Great Spirit has been pleased to give as : 
and if we should then be reduced to misfortune, the world 
will pity us, when they think of the amicable pro, 
we made to prevent the effusion of unnecessary blood." ' 

1 Indian Speech to the CongreM of the United I Michigan 

' 801 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

That the speech to Congress was the work of Captain 
Brant is made apparent by his remarks made six days 
later at McKee's council, held at the same Huron vil- 
lage. 1 With the same plain speaking he had used tow- 
ards the Americans, Brant now told the king's repre- 
sentative that it, was the devotion of the Indians to the 
cause of the British that had made the Americans their 
enemies; and that while the British were enjoying the 
blessings of peace the Indians were still involved in hos- 
tilities. Therefore, Brant, on behalf of the confederacy, 
demanded from " the great representative of the king, 
now arrived on this continent," an answer to the ques- 
tion whether the English would support them in their 
demand for the Ohio as a boundary. In this manner 
the vital question was referred to Lord Dorchester. 2 

While he was in England, Brant had attempted to 
learn from the Colonial Secretary, Lord Sidney, whether 
Great Britain would support the Indians in making war 
on the Americans. Lord Sidney evaded the question; 
and his example was followed by Sir Guy Carleton (now 
Lord Dorchester), who had arrived at Quebec, on Novem- 
ber 23, 1786, to resume the office of Governor of Canada. 
Major Matthews, on his way to take command at De- 
Pioneer and Historical Collections, vol. xi., p. 467. The tribes repre- 
sented were the Six Nations, Hurons, Delawares, Shawanese, Otta- 
was, Chippewas, Pottawatomies, Cherokees, Wabash Confederates, 
and Miamis. 

1 On July 23, 1787, General Knox acknowledged the receipt of 
Brant's letter from Huron Town, dated December 18, 1786, the com- 
munication having been delayed by the Shawanese. Knox assured 
Brant that the matter had been laid before Congress, " who have taken 
the same into consideration, and will soon come to some decision 
thereon, which will be communicated to the superintendent (General 
Butler) in order to be transmitted to you." 

2 McKee's Report, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, vol 
xi., p. 471. 

302 




GENERAL SIR GUY CARLETON 



PEACE THAT PROVES NO PEACE 

troit, wrote to Brant from Niagara that the British, so 
far from intending to surrender the posts, were, on the 
contrary, strengthening them, and would hold them so 
long as the Indians were ready to prevent the Amer- 
icans from coming against them. Lord Dorchester, 
wrote the major, was sorry that the Six Nations had 
promised to aid the Americans to make roads for the 
purpose of approaching Niagara. " In future his lord- 
ship wishes them (the Indians) to act as is best for their 
interest; he cannot begin a war with the Americans 
because some of their people encroach and make depre- 
dations upon parts of the Indian country ; but they must 
see it is his lordship's intention to defend the posts; and 
while these are preserved, the Indians must find great 
security therefrom." ' 

Nothing could have been more satisfactory to the 
English commanders in America than was the result of 
Brant's efforts to unite the Indians in a demand for the 
Ohio boundary. Sir John Johnson, the British super- 
intendent of Indian affairs, expressed this satisfaction in 
a letter to Brant, in the course of which this significant 
passage occurs : " Do not suffer an idea to hold a place 
in your mind that it will be for your interests to sit still 
and see the Americans attempt the posts. It is for your 
sakes chiefly, if not entirely, that we hold them. If 
you become indifferent about them, they may perhaps 
be given up ; what security would you then have ? You 
would be left at the mercy of a people whose blood calls 
for revenge ; whereas by supporting them you encour- 
age us to hold them, and encourage the new settlements, 
already considerable, and every day increasing by num- 



1 Stone's Life of Joseph Brant, vol. ii., p. 270. Matthews to Brant, 
May 29, 1787. 

303 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

bers coming in, who find they can't live in the states. 
Many thousands are preparing to come in. This increase 
of his Majesty's subjects will serve as a protection for 
you, should the subjects of the states, b}?" endeavoring 
to make further encroachments on you, disturb your 
quiet." ' 

Had the British surrendered the Northwestern posts, 
as provided in the treaty of 1783, the Indians would 
have been dependent on the Americans for those mar- 
kets which were the surest means of obtaining and main- 
taining peace. By holding the posts in order to protect 
the fur-trade and to secure the claims of the loyalists, 
England forced the United States into Indian wars that 
cost the lives of thousands of our people and long held 
back immigration and settlement. 

Lord Dorchester found additional reasons * for the 
retention of the posts in the fact that the United States 
as a nation was still an experiment ; that there were 
many elements of disunion, and great differences of 
opinion as to whether the new government should be a 
monarchy or a republic; and that France and Spain 
were anxiously watching every opportunity to strength- 
en and increase their influence and territory in North 
America. To be sure, the region west of the Mississippi 
nominally belonged to Spain; but in view of relations 
subsisting between the two nations, the secret transfer 
that was brought about in 1762 might well be reversed 
at any time without warning ; and as a matter of fact 
Louisiana was transferred back to France in 1800. 

1 Stone's Life of Joseph Brant, vol. ii. , p. 268. 

2 Dorchester to Sidney, January 16, April 10, 1787 ; October 14, 1788 ; 
and April 11, 1789.— Canadian Archives, 1890. Under the head of 
"Relations with the United States after the Peace of 1783," Mr. Brym- 
ner has grouped these letters. 

304 



PEACE THAT PROVES NO PEACE 

In this critical situation Lord Dorchester's position 
was most delicate. The creation of a new nation out 
of the thirteen British colonies on the Atlantic had left 
the remaining English possessions in America but little 
better than a string of isolated towns and posts loosely 
held together by one industry — the fur -trade. 1 The 
great majority of the people were French, without am- 
bition or initiative. Indeed, they seemed almost as 
much a part of their lands as were the very houses. 
Even the traders and wood -rangers kept the narrowest 
of paths as they performed their regular service for the 
great company which employed them. Out of these 
unpromising elements Lord Dorchester succeeded in 
laying the broad and deep foundations on which the 
Canada of to-day has been built. As Champlain was 
the father of New France, so Lord Dorchester became 
the father of Canada. A great administrator, his char- 
acter is sullied by no act of personal greed; and al- 
though he lived during the most openly corrupt period 
of British politics, the utmost that can be said against 
him is that a slender purse and a large family led him 
to strive for continuance in official position. Trained 
to war, he won distinction by bestowing on a discord- 
ant and unreconciled people the blessings of peace and 
tranquillity. 2 To the loyalists, driven from the United 

1 The best discussion of the question of the retention of the posts is 
to be found in Professor Andrew C. McLaughlin's paper on "Western 
Posts and British Debts," printed in the American Historical Society 
Report for 1894 ; and subsequently in the New England Tale Bevieic. 

1 Lord Dorchester, the third son of General Sir Guy Carleton, of 
Newry, County Down, Ireland, was born in 1724 ; he served in Flan- 
ders, and was wounded at the siege of Bergen -op -Zoom. He was 
quartermaster-general in Wolfe's expedition against Quebec, and was 
wounded twice in the operations about that city. A fourth wound 
was received at the capture of Havana. His success in driving the 
u 305 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

States because of their fealty to the crown of England, 
he extended every opportunity to make settlements 
within the broad regions that still remained of Eng- 
land's transatlantic empire. His efforts on behalf of 
Canada often resulted to the detriment of the United 
States; for it was inevitable that the violent feelings 
engendered by the Revolution, and especially by the 
treatment — justly, as we believe — accorded to the 
Tories, should continue to tind expression whenever 
provocation offered. 

Even while advocating the passage of the Quebec act 
before the Ilouse of Commons, he was frank to state 
that the Indians regarded the country between the 
Ohio and the Great Lakes as their own territory, with- 
in which no European monarch had rights. It is not 
strange, therefore, to find him willing to give counte- 
nance to this position, when it was maintained in op- 
position to the United States by Brant and the Indians 
over whom that powerful chief had influence. This 
theory of Indian monarchy had been asserted against 
the French and English at the outbreak of the French 
and Indian War. and against the English and Americans 
at the beginning of the Revolution; but it never was 
acquiesced in by the whites. Indeed, the Indians them- 
selves had repudiated it repeatedly by placing them- 

Americaus from Canada should have been rewarded by the command 
of the expedition led by Burgoyne. It is fortunate for our country 
that a Less capable man was selected. As governor of Canada lie won 

the reputation of •'having the cleanest hands of any person ever in- 
trusted with public money.' - As commander of the British forces in 
New York lie managed the withdrawal of the English troops. He 
was one of Wolfe's executors and legatees. In 1786 he was raised to 
the peerage as Baron Dorchester. For a sketch of his life, sec T% 
Eih/Uh7i Political Magazine for 1783, p. 351 ; and Kingsford's History 
of Canada, vol. v., p. 191. 

306 



PEACE THAT PROVES NO PEACE 

selves under the protection of France or of England. 
Moreover, the treaty of 1783 left Dorchester no right 
to interfere beyond the line of the British possessions; 
although as a practical ruler he doubtless felt himself 
bound to take advantage of any circumstance that 
would aid England to regain the Western country, in 
case the uneasy settlers should incline to seek an alliance 
with Spain in order to gain an outlet for their products. 
In all the intrigues of those most troublous times, 
Quebec was the headquarters for British influence, as 
New Orleans was for Spanish and French designs on the 
new nation. To aid Lord Dorchester to understand the 
problem with which he had to deal, an emissary who 
had proved himself valuable during the Revolution was 
sent from England, and, at the munificent salary of £200 
a year, was despatched to the Northwestern country 1 as 
a spy. The observations of this " cool and temperate 
man " throw a strong light on the manner in which the 
beginnings of our national existence were regarded in 
British ministerial circles, and prove conclusively that 
England acted deliberately in supporting the Indians 
while they carried on the warfare against the armies of 
the United States. To the English the Indians were 
part and parcel of the fur-trade, which was to be main- 
tained at every cost. Therefore it was essential that the 
savages be protected in their hunting-grounds. Dor- 
chester apprehended that the United States meant to 
take the posts by force, and, however indifferent England 
might be about retaining them, he was prepared to repel 
war by war. 8 

1 Brymner identifies this ageut as Major George Beckwith, but the 
facts concerning him are obscure. — See Canadian, Archives, 1890, p. 
xi. el seq. 

8 Dorcliester to Sir John Johnson, December 11, 1786; Dorchester to 
Sidney, January 16, 1787. — See Canadian Archives, 1890. 

307 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Making his headquarters at Detroit, the British emis- 
sary put himself in communication with Pittsburg and 
Kentucky, and made systematic reports to Dorchester. 
The emigration to Kentucky and the Ohio regions he 
declared to exceed the bounds of credibility. " The en- 
terprising people of New England, checked in their 
commercial pursuits, turn with wonderful facility to 
this tempting though remote country, and without be- 
ing deterred b}>- the danger, or prevented by the diffi- 
culty of finding means of subsistence for themselves 
and families until they can form an establishment in 
those distant settlements, they travel in hordes to the 
Southwest, threatening the weak Spanish provinces with 
early hostilities." As a preliminary step, Colonel Sher- 
man, of Connecticut, was preparing to cross the Missis- 
sippi with five hundred armed men, and to establish a 
post at the mouth of the Missouri. The Kentuckians, 
too, were bent on forcing the free navigation of the 
Mississippi, and plans were maturing to reach the 
Michilimackinac fur -trade along the water -route dis- 
covered by Joliet and Marquette more than a, century 
before. All these schemes were being prosecuted with- 
out regard to Congress, a body as yet too feeble to exer- 
cise authority over any part of the Western country. 1 

The situation in the Western country had indeed be- 
come critical for the United States. Separated from 
the Atlantic seaboard by a difficult range of mountains, 

1 In October, 1786, Clark led a feeble expedition against the Indians 
in the neighborhood of Vincennes, the people of which place had 
written to him that they considered themselves British subjects. 
Clark placed a garrison in fort ; but his own habits had now become 
so bad that he had no control over his men, and both Virginia and 
Congress were compelled to repudiate his action in seizing property 
belonging to a Spanish trader. — See English's Life of George Rogers 
Clark, vol. ii., p. 796. 

308 



PEACE THAT PROVES NO PEACE 

the Northwest was still in possession of numerous bands 
of hostile Indians fed and clothed by Great Britain, and 
thus enabled to carry on a warfare of extermination 
against the settlers. On the north the outlet for the 
far-trade was by the St. Lawrence. On the west the 
Kentucky and Illinois countries must find an outlet for 
their trade by way of the Mississippi, and the naviga- 
tion of that stream was in control of the Spanish, who 
were using this advantage to alienate the Western peo- 
ple from their remote kinsmen east of the mountains. 
No one appreciated this situation better than Presi- 
dent Washington, who was himself a large owner of 
Ohio lands, but whose concern for the expansion and 
strengthening of the nation was of such a character as 
to make his personal interests not a bias but simply a 
means of knowledge. More closely than any other man 
then living he had been identified with the beginnings 
of Western conquest. As a young man he had played a 
large part in wresting the Northwest from France ; and 
now in his maturer years he was to direct those forces 
which were forever to bind that territory to the United 
States. 

Five years before the outbreak of the Revolution, 
Washington had urged upon Governor Thomas Johnson 
of Maryland the necessity of an enlarged plan for reach- 
ing the Ohio, " as a means of becoming the channel of 
conveyance of the extensive and valuable trade of a ris- 
ing empire." ' Before resigning his commission as com- 
mander-in-chief, Washington had made a tour of western 
New York, in company with Governor Clinton, and the 
two made a joint purchase of six thousand acres ; for he 



1 House of Representatives Report No. 228, Nineteenth Congress, 
first session. 

309 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

rightly apprehended that " the Yorkers will delay no 
time to remove every obstacle in the way of other com- 
munication, so soon as the posts of Oswego and Niagara 
are surrendered/" In 1784, Washington spent a month 
riding through the Ohio country to examine the routes 
for penetrating the mountains ; and it was on this trip 
that he first met Albert Gallatin, who has left on record 
a description of the scene. The great soldier seated at 
the head of a rough table in a frontier cabin, called one 
after another from the crowd of frontiersmen and ex- 
amined each at length as to trails and gaps, pursuing 
the question long after the nimble-minded young Swiss 
had decided on which side the weight of testimony lay. 
The extreme patience and care that the general took to 
get to the bottom of the matter before allowing his 
own mind to reach a decision greatly impressed Gallatin 
with the force and strength of Washington's character. 2 
Returning from this horseback journey of nearly seven 
hundred miles, Washington laid before Governor Har- 
rison of Virginia a great scheme for bringing the trade 
from Detroit and the West to tide-water by way of Fort 
Pitt and the Potomac, a route more than a hundred 
miles shorter than that by way of Philadelphia, and three 
hundred miles shorter than the Albany route. 3 Calling 
Harrison's attention to the fact that " the flanks and 
rear" of the United States were possessed by Spain and 
England, he argued that unless shorter and easier chan- 
nels were made for the trade of the West, "the stream of 
commerce will glide gently down the Mississippi"; 
while by opening these new communications, all parts 
of the Union would be cemented together by common in- 

1 Washington's will. 

- Henry Adams's Life of Albert Gallatin, p. 57. 
3 Pickell's History of the Potomac Company, p. 174. 
310 




GEORGE WASHINGTON 

(After a painting by Gilbert Stuart.) 



PEACE THAT PROVES NO PEACE 

terests. By opening the eastern water communications 
to the Ohio, and by opening the Ohio to Lake Erie, was 
Washington's method to " draw not only the produce of 
the Western settlers, but also the peltry and fur-trade of 
the lakes to our posts : thus adding an immense increase 
to our exports, and binding these people to us by a chain 
which can never be broken." 1 In 1785 Washington be- 
came the first president of the Potomac Company, but 
Avhen he was elected President of the United States, in 
1788, he turned the office over to Thomas Johnson. The 
costly national road to Wheeling, and the Chesapeake and 
Ohio Canal, whose crumbling masonry and still used but 
almost overgrown towpaths are now more picturesque 
than useful, were the direct results of Washington's en- 
thusiasm for Western communications ; while the Balti- 
more and Ohio Railroad trains now thunder along the 
Cumberland turnpike from Pittsburg to the Potomac. 2 
As at the end of the old plays the actors one by 
one step to the foot - lights to make their parting 
speeches, so we take leave of the more prominent 
British players in the drama of the Revolution in the 
Northwest. On June 23, 1782, the Dwdalus arrived 

1 Marshall's Life of Washington, vol. v., p. 14 

2 For Washington's connection with Western lands and the Potomac 
Company, see the very suggestive papers by Herbert B. Adams, Ph.D., 
in Johns Hopkins ' ' Historical Studies, " third series. Dr. Adams figures 
that Washington owned in 1799 about 70,000 acres of land which he 
had originally bought for speculative purposes ; his lands were valued 
at $488,339 ; and in the Northwest Territory on the Little Miami he 
held 3051 acres valued at $5 an acre. The father of his country was 
at once a man of the highest personal and political probity ; and yet 
he was a speculator ! As Henry Adams points out (Life of Albert 
Gallatin, p. 53), all America was engaged in land speculations. 
Robert Morris closed his public career a bankrupt and in prison as the 
result of his speculations in lands ; and no one seems to have made a 
fortune by such investments. 

311 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

from England bearing the news that Henry Hamilton 
had been appointed lieutenant - governor at Quebec, 
and that his fellow-prisoner Jehu Hay had been com- 
missioned to the same office at Detroit. 

Hamilton's sufferings in his Virginia ••dungeon" ex- 
cited a great amount of sympathy for him. both in 
England and among the Tories in America. 1 The posi- 
tion in which he now found himself, however, so far 
exceeded his abilities that, after scarcely more than 
a year at Quebec, the government notified him that 
there was no further need of his services. His friends 
succeeded, to use his phrase, " in forging for him on the 
public anvil " an appointment as governor of Bermuda, 
where his name is still perpetuated in the capital city of 
those islands. Tradition in Bermuda has it that he was 
a homely man. of quiet, unpretentious habits, not given 
to display or ostentation. 3 After four years of service 

1 In Winthrop Sargent's Loyalist Poetry of the Retolution, p. 50, is 
this stauza on Jefferson and Hamilton: 

•"Virginia caitiff! Jeff by name, 
Perhaps of Jeffries sprung, of rotten fame ; 
His savage letter all belief exceeds. 
And Congress glories in his brutal deeds. 
In the dark dungeon Hamilton is thrown ; 
The virtuous hero there disdains to groan ! 
There, with his brave companions, faithful friends, 
Th' approaching hour in silence he attends. 
When, with his council, shall the wretch expire 
Or by the British or celestial tire I" 

Hamilton was exchanged for Captain James Willing, of Philadel- 
phia, a younger brother of Bouquet's friend and correspondent. See 
cuite, p. 156. 

3 For this bit of tradition, extant in the family of Chief -justice 
Leonard, of Hamilton. Bermuda, as well as for copies of Hamilton's 
letters and the records of his governorship, I am under obligations 
to Mrs. Mary K. Bosworth Smith. In a letter to Lieuteuant Jacob 

312 



PEACE THAT PROVES XO PEACE 

there he was transferred to the governorship of Domini- 
ca, where in 1796 he died, full of years, and not with- 
out public esteem and honors. 1 

Although Lord Shelburne professed that in appoint- 
ing Hamilton and Hay he had acted entirely on Hal- 
dimand's recommendations, as he himself was unac- 
quainted with either of the gentlemen, Haldiraand was 
not willing to see so faithful and efficient an officer 
as De Peyster placed under a half-pay lieutenant like 
Hay. Accordingly the commander-in-chief detained 
Detroit's new lieutenant-governor until he secured De 
Peyster's promotion and transfer to Niagara. Hay 
reached his new station in the July of 1784, much 
broken in health and spirits ; and after a } T ear of peace- 
ful occupation of the governors palace, on August 2, 
1785, he was carried thence to his grave." In Septem- 
ber, 17S5, De Peyster returned to England with his regi- 
ment, and eventually settled in Scotland, in the town of 
Dumfries, relinquishing the pursuit of arms for the 
gentler occupations of domestic life. Yet his martial 
vigor only slumbered ; for when the Napoleonic wars 
made it necessary to embodv the militia to defend Great 
Britain's coasts, Colonel de Peyster became commander 
of the Dumfries Gentlemen Volunteers, which organi- 

Schieffelin, of New York (the original of which was presented to the 
Hamilton Library in 1897 by a son of Hemy Hamilton Schieffelin), 
the governor says : "Everything at this place goes on very harmo- 
nious^' ; and tho' I had a strong desire to have remained in Canada, 
and had man}' valuable acquaintances there whom I highly esteem, 
yet I think my lot is cast in a fair ground, and am satisfied." Hamil- 
ton was the fourth son of Gustavus Frederick, seventh Viscount 
Boyne. 

1 There is a short obituary notice in The Gentleman's Magazine for 
1796. 

2 Ford's Moravian Settlements at Mt. Clemens, Michigan Pioneer 
and Historical Collections, vol. x., p. 107. 

313 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

zation he drilled with the thoroughness of a martinet. 
The commander, however, saw but one contest. In the 
columns of the local paper he essayed a combat in verse, 
only to be badly worsted by one of his own soldiers — 
Eobert Burns. 1 In November, 1822, De Peyster mounted 
his great charger for the last time, riding about the 
country with the vigor of middle age; on the 26th of 
that month an accident brought him to his death, at the 
ripe age of eighty-six years. 2 In November, 17S1, Haldi- 
mand sailed from Quebec for London, where he was well 
received by Lord Sidney, and was presented to the king 
and queen ; with all due pomp and circumstance he was 
made a Knight of the Bath ; s and as Sir Frederick Haldi- 
mand he died in May, 1791, at his birthplace, Yverdon, 
Switzerland, leaving an ample fortune to his nephew and 
his nieces. 4 On March 17, 17S5. Pat Sinclair was re- 
leased from Xewgate Prison, in London, on payment of 
the Mackinac bills protested by Haldimand. 5 

1 See Burns's Poem on Life, addressed to Colonel De Peyster. 
• De Peyster's Miscellanies, p. elxxi. 
Haldimand's Diary, Canadian Archives, 1889, p. 145. 

4 Canadian Archives, 1889, p. xxv. 

5 Haldimand's Diary. Canadian Archives, 1889, p. 147 ; Sinclair to 
Haldimand, Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, vol. xi., p. 456. 



CHAPTER IX 
THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY 

Silas Deajste of Connecticut, sent to France as one of 
the agents of the Continental Congress in order to obtain 
supplies for the array and loans for the United States, 
not meeting with all the success that his principal de- 
sired, repeatedly suggested that the Western lands be 
sold to obtain the money that came so grudgingly with- 
out real -estate collateral. He had no doubt that he 
could place a very considerable quantity of these lands 
among the Germans, at a fair price; and apparently 
it never occurred to him that the lands he was so ready 
to sell were already occupied by savage bands of Ind- 
ians ; or that beyond this wide belt of hunting-grounds 
were forts and garrisons so commanding as to make an 
attack on them not less hazardous than was England's 
task of crossing the Atlantic to fight the colonists along 
the sea-coast. 

In Congress the question of jurisdiction over the 
lands of the Northwest did not receive attention until, 
on October 15, 1777, Maryland proposed that "the 
United States in Congress assembled shall have the 
sole and exclusive right and power to ascertain and fix 
the western boundary of such states as claim to the 
Mississippi or South Sea, and lay out the land beyond 
the boundary, so ascertained, into separate and inde- 
pendent states, from time to time, as the numbers and 

315 



1 11 E N K T u w K s r l N DE R T ll R E K F 1. A v; s 

circumstances of the people may require." 1 Squeezed 
in between the states of Pennsylvania and Virginia 

(each quarrelling with the other about their respeetive 
territories while still reaching farther and farther into 
the West,) Maryland was in a position to see and to feel 
' -my passion for expansion might easily lead to other 
Dunmore wars. So far were the other states from 
eing with their sister, that Congress even took 
oooasion to provide in the artieles of Confederation that 
no state should be deprived of territory for the benefit 
of the United States, although the three smaller states 
desired to be allowed to share in the proceeds of the 
sales of Western lands.'' 

In December, 1779, while George Rogers Clark, at the 
head of Virginia troops paid from the Virginia treasury, 
was conquering the Illinois country. Maryland was for- 
bidding her delegates to ratify the Articles of Confeder- 
ation before the several states should waive their claims 
to territory beyond the mountains; for. said Maryland, 
Virginia might sell the territory thus gained, and by 
making her own taxes low might quickly drain "Mary- 
land, where taxes would be higher and land less cheap.' 
intry "wrested from the common enemy 
by the blood and treasure of the thirteen states should 
lered as a common property, subject to be 
parcelled out by Congress into free, convenient, and 

' Journals -- from 1774 to 1788, i 

P W 

s In his exhaus the subject of the North v 

Michigan University, ach 

fact that •the fallacy that there s wild lands appears to have 

bean universally s :-.e hundred 

- ago ... In the loug run the national government has not 

found the public domain a - of revenue." — " rffeaotf 

:$eq. 



THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY 

Independent governments." In the game month of 
May, L779, that Maryland was pressing on Oongresa 
the restrictions *\"- Bought t<> impose on Virginia, the 
latter state established a Land office to obtain the 
money necessary to enable her to pay Clark's expenses 
and to support bis army on Its way to Detroit, a self 
imposed task Indeed, bo far as Virginia was concerned, 
but <>ne that served Maryland well by protecting her 
frontiers from Indian raids. In October of the same 
year, while the British -paid Indians were watching 
every opportunity to wipe out the Blender Virginia 
settlements in the Kentucky region, and to recover the 
valley of the Wabash, Maryland secured the pa 
by Congress of a resolution reoommending that Virginia 
close her land -office. Maryland absolutely refused to 
join the Confederation until the land matter was settled ; 
and during the Revolution she stood technically as an 
ally and not as a member of the [Jnited States. Vir- 
ginia entered ;i vigorous remonstrance to this selfish 
policy of her neighbor, at the same time stating her 
readiness to listen to any just and reasonable proposi- 
tions for removing the ostensible causes for delaying the 
ratification of the Confederation. 1 

At this juncture the New Fork Assembly, acting 
under the advice of General Schuyler, then one of the 
delegates in Congress from that state, passed an act 
authorizing either an unreserved or a limited cession of 

1 "Maryland'i Influence upon Land Cessions to the United States," 
by Herbert B, Adams, PhD., Johns Hopkins University Stud 
Historical and Political Science, third serli This monograp 
most painstaking presentation of a novel subject. The facts are as 
Professor Adams states them; In bis admiration for the results 
obtained l>y Maryland's stubbornness, however, be seems to me to do 
jtn (injustice both to Virginia's sacrifices and also to ber graceful ac 
tion in ceding ber territories to the [Jnited Sta 

817 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

her Western lands, according as her delegates should 
deem it expedient. The western and northern boun- 
daries of New York had been fixed in the Quebec act 
by her London agent, Edmund Burke, who had the bill 
amended on the floor of the House of Commons; and 
General Schuyler had ascertained that there was no 
purpose in Congress to curtail these extensive limits. 
What New York gave up, therefore, was a claim to the 
Ohio country based on ancient and unacknowledged 
conquests by her former allies, the Iroquois. Without 
impugning New York's magnanimity in making a sur- 
render of lands that Virginia had just conquered, the 
fact remains that she had nothing to give : this noth- 
ing she gave so gracefully as to win much credit, and 
to exert no little influence on other states similarly 
circumstanced, and also on Congress. To that body, 
on September 6, 1780, report was made on the Mary- 
land Instructions, the Virginia Remonstrance, and the 
New York Cession ; and in that report the several 
States were urged to remove the embarrassments re- 
specting the Western country by a liberal surrender of 
a portion of their territorial claims, and thus " establish 
the Federal Union on a fixed and permanent basis, and 
on principles acceptable to all its respective members." 
Connecticut, on September 10th, offered to give up her 
title to the lands on the condition that she retain juris- 
diction over the territory, a principle for which Alex- 
ander Hamilton contended, possibly because he object- 
ed to the formation of new states, especially on the 
frontiers. A month later Congress provided for the 
sale of such lands as should be ceded, and also declared 
that separate governments would be erected west of the 
mountains, as proposed by Franklin in 1755. Moreover, 
the necessary and reasonable expenses incurred by any 

318 



THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY 

particular state in subduing any British posts, or in 
maintaining forts or garrisons within or for the defence, 
or in acquiring any part of the territory that might be 
ceded or relinquished to the United States, would be 
reimbursed. Thus a way was opened for Virginia to 
yield her conquered lands without great financial loss ; 
and her services found Congressional acknowledgment. 

Virginia, the only one of the states which had an 
equitable title, now came forward, and on January 2, 
1781, offered to cede her lands northwest of the Ohio, 
on condition that her possession of the lands south of 
that river be guaranteed, and that the claims of other 
parties to the Northwestern lands be annulled. These 
conditions were declared by Congress to be incompat- 
ible with the honor, interests, and peace of the United 
States. Maryland, perceiving that her point against 
territorial acquisitions by individual states was now 
virtually made, on March 1, 1781, joined the Union. 
The United States being now an accomplished fact, 
suitable announcement was made to the respective 
states, to foreign courts, and to the army. 

A committee of Congress, thinking to overreach both 
Virginia and Connecticut, reported in favor of accept- 
ing New York's cession, because by so doing the United 
States would acquire all the lands on both sides of the 
Ohio, on the theory that the territories of the Six Na- 
tions and their allies extended from Lake Erie to the 
Alleghanies and westward to the Mississippi. 1 This 
theory was not true in fact even at the outbreak of the 
French and Indian War ; much less was it true in 1782. 8 

1 Hinsdale says that New York's claim appears the most flimsy of 
all the Western claims. The original report in manuscript is preserved 
in the Department of State. 

2 Johnson vs. Mcintosh, 8 Wheaton. 

319 



T II E N R T II W E ST UN D E R THREE FLAGS 

Moreover, nations do not derive jurisdiction from sav- 
ages, but in spite of them.' Congress, as is often the 
oase, grasped both horns of the dilemma, by accepting 
Now York's unqualified cession, and then asking Vir- 
ginia to remove the restrictions from her offer. On 
Ootober 20, L783, Virginia, ever loyal to the establish- 
ment of the new nation, authorized her delegates to 
make the cession. As governor. Jefferson had written 
to Washington that the state would give up her claims 
for the sake of harmony ; and as a delegate in Congress 
he, with his colleagues, Samuel Hardy, Arthur Lee, and 
.lames Monroe, completed the transfer. Virginia, how- 
ever, made two reservations of territory — the first of 
150,000 acres promised to George Rogers Clark and his 
officers and soldiers; the second a tract between the 
Scioto and Little Miami, to be used as bounty lands for 
the Virginia soldiers of the Revolutionary War. 

Ten years from the date of the battle of Lexington, 
Massachusetts ceded her Western lands, embracing the 
lower portions of Michigan and Avisconsin. At the 
time these lands were absolutely under British control, 
although nominally they were within the boundaries of 
the United States. Robert Rogers, the New Hamp- 
shire Ranger, had received the surrender of Detroit 
from the French, and Jonathan Carver, a native of 
Connecticut, had once been an unsuccessful trader at 
Mackinac; but the only connection that any resident of 

1 The report also held that I he proclamation of 1763, which fixed 
Virginia's boundary at the mountains, and the Walpole grant were 
still effective. This was a flagrant case of injustice ; for Congress 
itself had repudiated the boundaries of 1763, and the Walpole grant 
was clearly ineffective when hostilities broke out. The Illinois and 
Wabash giants made to Lord Dunmore and his friends were brushed 
aside by the committee, and were afterwards declared invalid by the 
supreme court. — Johusou <>■. Mcintosh, S Wheaton. 

320 



THE N ORT II WEST TERRITORY 

Massachusetts had with this territory was the vain 
demand made by Colonel William Hull for the surren- 
der of the posts, as has been related. Connecticut, 
whose claims were equally shadowy with those of 
Massachusetts, secured the best bargain of any of the 
yielding states, by retaining in the Connecticut Reserve 
a tract of three and a quarter million acres, over which 
she claimed jurisdiction till 1800. ' Reserving five hun- 
dred thousand acres for those of her citizens who had 
suffered from the wanton and piratical raids of the 
British on her coasts during the Revolution, Connecti- 
cut sold the remainder for $1,200,000, and devoted the 
money to schools and colleges. 

The moral of the land cessions to the nation would 
seem to be this: Maryland, by standing out for the 
national ownership and control of the Northwest, 
brought about a result of tremendous benefit to the 
United States; New York, by giving up early what she 
never had, won for herself great credit ; Virginia gen- 
erously made a distinct sacrifice of dearly conquered 
territory over which she was actually exercising juris- 
diction ; Massachusetts quit-claimed a title she could not 
defend ; and Connecticut gained an empire to which 
she was not entitled, but which she put to the very 
best of uses. 2 Moreover, from the very nature of things, 
Virginia could not have held control over far-distant 

1 For a succinct statement as to the rise of the Northwest Territory 
and Western Reserve, see James A. Garfield's Address before the 
Historical Society of Geauga County, Ohio, September 16, 1873. — 
"Old South Leaflets," General Series, No. 43. 

• A brief but of course perspicuous statement of the facts relative 
to the land cessions, by Justin Winsor and Professor Channing, is 
given at the beginning of their article on "Territorial Acquisitions 
and Divisions," in the appeudix to vol. vii. of the Narrative and Criti- 
cal History of America. 

x 321 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

territory, any more than Henderson & Company could 
have continued to rule Transylvania as a proprietary 
colon}^; or than Connecticut could have held the West- 
ern Reserve after it became populated. Franklin had 
foreseen the necessity of new jurisdictions beyond the 
mountains, even before the French war broke out ; and 
no power could have thwarted this manifest destiny. 

How the French discovered and possessed the North- 
west; how England wrested New France from her an- 
cient enemy; how George Rogers Clark made partial 
conquest of the territory for Virginia ; how the treaty- 
makers won extensive boundaries for the new nation; 
and how at the instance of Maryland the claimant 
state, and especially Virginia, by " the most marked 
instance of a large and generous self-denial," made 
cession of their lands to the general government — all 
these things have been told. It now remains to dis- 
cover how this vast empire, larger than any country in 
Europe save Russia, was to be governed and peopled. 
For the most part this immense region was an unbroken 
wilderness ; but tales of the richness of its alluvial soil, 
and its accessibility by means of noble streams and 
great inland seas, had caught the ear of people made 
restless by the possibilities opened up by a magnificent 
peace attained after a prolonged and wasting Avar. 

On the ver}' day that Virginia made cession of her 
claims, Thomas Jefferson came forward in Congress with 
a plan for the government of the ceded territory. There 
were still three obstacles in the way of exercising juris- 
diction : first, there were controversies with Spain as to 
the western boundary and the navigation of the Missis- 
sippi ; second, England still held military possession of 
the frontiers; and third, the ceded territory was occu- 
pied by numerous hostile tribes of Indians. "With the 

322 



THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY 

exception of the reservations made as to territory by 
Virginia, and as to both territory and jurisdiction by 
Connecticut, the United States succeeded alike to the 
jurisdiction and to the title to unoccupied lands. That 
is to say, the power to grant vacant lands within the 
ceded territory, a power that had formerly resided in 
the crown, or the proprietary governments created by 
the crown, now passed, by reason of the state cessions, 
into the possession of the Government of the United 
States ; and to the general government belonged the 
exclusive right to extinguish, either by purchase or by 
conquest, the Indian title of occupancy. It is important 
to remember this fact, as it is the key to the otherwise 
perplexing subject of Northwestern affairs. 1 

Since June 15, 1779, Virginia had been exercising 
jurisdiction over so much of the Northwest as was in- 
cluded in Clark's conquest. John Todd, Virginia's com- 
mandant of the County of Illinois, appointed officers 
and organized courts both at Kaskaskia and at Vin- 
cennes. Todd and the officers under him made their 
first business not justice but land-titles; and had the 
grants made by these industrious officials been held 
valid, probably there would have been little land left 
for disposal by the United States. Called to Virginia 
by land matters, Todd was returning through Kentucky 
when, on August 18, 1782, he was killed at the battle 
of Blue Licks. The government which he set in mo- 
tion answered the demands of the sparse settlements, 

1 In Johnson vs. Mcintosh, 8 Wheaton, Chief-justice Marshall makes 
luminous exposition of the title to unoccupied lands. He never ques- 
tioned Virginia's title to all the lands included within her charier-lines 
from the Atlantic first to the "South Sea," and, after the treaty of 
1763, to the Mississippi ; nor did he think that Virginia was yielding 
but a nominal title when she made cession to the United States. 

323 






THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

and for five years the French inhabitants governed 
themselves according to the " custom of Paris," which 
had come to mean that when disputes arose, the priest, 
the commandant, or some one in authority was appealed 
to for a decision. 1 

Two great principles were embodied in the ordinance 
reported by Mr. Jefferson : first, the Northwest Terri- 
tory was forever to remain a part of the United States ; 
and second, that vast region, to be divided into sovereign 
states, was to be dedicated to freedom. Thomas Jeffer- 
son, at the age of forty-one years, had in his mind no 
thought of the day when he should inspire the Virginia 
and Kentucky resolutions ; at that time his one fear 
was lest, beguiled by England or Spain, the new region 
should break away from the Union and either set up a 
government of its own, or else cast its lot with the 

1 John Reynolds, iii his Pioneer History of Illinois, says that after 
the departure of Todd, " there was a mixture of civil and British law 
in the country, administered by the courts, down to 1790, when Gov- 
ernor St. Clair came to Kaskaskia and set in motion the territorial 
government under the ordinance or act of Congress of 1787." At Viu- 
cenues, Todd appointed M. Legrass "lieutenant-governor"; but in 
1787 General Harmar, as civil governor and superintendent of Indian 
affairs, took charge of matters, either personally or by deputy. — Law's 
Vina nnes, p. 41. 

David Todd and Hauuah Owen, his wife, were Scotch-Irish immi- 
grants who settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, before the 
Revolution. Their three sons, John, Robert and Levi, emigrated to 
Fayette County, Kentuck) 7 , in 1778. Levi was with Clark at Kaskas- 
kia, and took charge of the abusive Roeheblave, on that prisoner's 
journey to Virginia. His granddaughter became Mrs. Abraham 
Lincoln. 

At Vinceuues, the judges, F. Bosseron, L. E. Deline, Pierre Gamelin, 
and Pierre Querez (who used his mark by way of expedition — or illit- 
eracy), took turns in leaving the bench so that their fellows could 
make grants of land to one another. One of these grants was ten 
miles square. — See Law's Yincennes, chapter on Public Lands. 

334 



THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY 

nations through whose territories the products of the 
rich and fertile country must find an outlet. Again, 
Jefferson was always a consistent opponent of slavery, 
and by providing that throughout the Northwest human 
bondage should cease after the year 1800, he hoped and 
expected that within the time named what little slavery 
then existed in the new region would be wiped out. 1 
Having laid down two such broad principles, Mr. Jeffer- 
son might be permitted to indulge his well-known taste 
for minute details and for classical appellations by pro- 
viding the exact boundaries for seven States, to be 
known as Sylvania, Michigania, Chersonesus, Assenisipia, 
Mesopotamia, Polypotamia, and Polisipia. 2 Congress, 
however, recommitted the report, and, when it was again 
submitted, the provision for the names of the states was 
stricken out. Then Congress struck out the provision 
relating to slavery, and the ordinance of April 23, 1784, 
became a law. As supplementary to the ordinance, 
Congress, also, at the instance of Jefferson, provided 

1 The first proposition for the exclusion of slavery from the Ohio 
country is to be found in a petition presented to Congress by certain 
disbanded New England soldiers, who in 1783 asked for a grant of 
lauds in that region. The author of the petition probably was Timothy 
Pickering. Jefferson's proposition would have excluded slavery from 
Kentucky, whither the Virginians with their slaves were already 
settling in great numbers ; and for this reason the slavery clause met 
successful opposition. The State Department manuscripts relating 
to the Northwest Territory show by the amendments written on the 
broadside reports how carefully the later ordinances were confined to 
"the country northwest of the river Ohio." 

2 Washington's plan for the Northwest was first to secure the Indian 
titles to a portion of the territory and erect a state that would include 
the region from Pennsylvania to the mouth of the Great Miami, and 
stretching northward to include Detroit. But for the necessity of 
including Detroit, he would have preferred smaller boundaries, as less 
likely to meet Indian opposition. — See Sparks's Washington, vol. viii. 
p. 483. 

325 



DHE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

for a system of government surveys, by which the lands 
wore to be divided into townships six miles square ; and 
also provided that the surveyed lands should be the 
first to be offered for sale. Under this rectangular sys- 
tenij the whole Western country has been regularly Laid 
off; the old "tomahawk rights" found no plaoe; and ;is 
a consequence there were no overlapping claims. 1 

The subject of slavery in the Northwest would not 
down. On March lti, 1 7ST>, Mr. Kino- brought up the 
subject by a motion to refer to the committee of the 
whole House a proposition totally preventing- slavery in 
the Northwest, and the motion prevailed, but there the 
matter rested. 3 During the first half of 17St>, Mi-. Mon- 
roe struggled with the question o( a temporary govern- 
ment, but without accomplishing results. In September, 
however, a new committee, consisting of Mr. Johnson of 
Connecticut, Mr. Pinckneyof South Carolina, Mr. Smith 
of New York. Mr. Dane of Massachusetts, and Mr. 
Henry of Maryland essayed the task, and on the 20th 
of April, 1787, reported " An ordinance for the govern-' 
ment of the Western Territory." On the 10th of May 
this colorless measure was ordered to a third reading; 
but Congress, being dissatisfied, on July 9th referred it 
to a new committee, made up of Mr. Oarrington of Vir- 
ginia. Mr. Dane o( Massachusetts, Mr. R. 11. Lee of 
Virginia, Mr. Kean of South Carolina, and Mr. Smith 

1 As Jefferson reported the bill the townships were to In' ton miles 
square. On motion of Mr. Grayson, of Virginia, supported by Mr. 
Monroe, the size was reduced to six miles square, and on May 00, 
ITS.'), the bill was passed.— See Thomas Donaldson's Public Domain, 
pp. ITS. 197. 

- This action on Mr. King's part was the result of a letter written 
to him by Timothy Pickering', who implored him to make one more 
effort for the exclusion of slavery, before the constitutions to be adopted 
by the new states should make Blicll exclusion impossible. 

396 



THE N B T EWE 8 T 'J - E RBI T B V 

of New York — a majority being new members. After 
a deliberation of forty-eight hours the committee brought 
in a radically new measure, which, after being debated 
and amended on June 12th, was passed by a unanimous 
vote on the 13th. The amendment adverted to was the 
provision prohibiting slavery, to which was attached a 
proviso permitting the reclamation of fugitive slaves. 
Mr. Dane of Massachusetts proposed the amendment, 
and it was agreed to with but one dissenting vote. On 
the same day, in the Constitutional Convention, a pro- 
vision was agreed to giving the slave-owning states a 
representation in Congress based on the whole number 
of free persons (including those bound to service for a 
term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed) plus 
three-fifths of all other persons. 

Four days covers the legislative history of the "im- 
mortal " Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the 
territory northwest of the Ohio — legislation compa- 
rable only to the Constitution of the United States, 
which was being written at the same time in a neigh- 
boring city. In his tremendous reply to Hayne. Daniel 
Webster doubted " whether one single law of any law- 
giver, ancient or modern, had produced effects of more 
distinct, marked, and lasting character than the Ordi- 
nance of 1787." Senator Hoar, in his splendid tribute 1 
to the founders of the Northwest, speaks of the ordi- 
nance as belonging with the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence and the Constitution — " one of the three title- 
deeds of American constitutional liberty." Judge 
Cooley, after a life spent under its beneficent influ- 
ences, stamped it as " immortal for the grand results 

rge F. Hoar's oration at the centennial of the founding of the 
Northwest at Marietta, Ohio, April 7, 1888 (Worcester, Massachusetts, 
1895), p. 40. 

327 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

which have followed from its adoption, not less than 
for the wisdom and far-seeing statesmanship that con- 
ceived and gave form to its provisions. No charter of 
government in the history of any people," continues 
the great jurist, " has so completely withstood the tests 
of time and experience ; it had not a temporary adap- 
tation to a particular emergency, but its principles were 
for all time, and worthy of acceptance under all circum- 
stances. It has been the fitting model for all subse- 
quent territorial government in America." ' 

This monumental compact between thirteen existing 
states, and five states yet to be born, provided for that 
freedom of religion without which Virginia's growth 
had been retarded ; for the inviolability of contracts, a 
principle then being fought out in Shay's rebellion ; for 
the fair and just treatment of the Indians, and the aboli- 
tion of private wars against the savages ; for the per- 
manence in the Union of the States to be created within 
the new territory ; for the absolute freedom of all their 
waters and portages ; for the perpetual encouragement 
of schools and the means of education ; and for the 
freedom of every person within the territory excepting 
fugitive slaves from the original states. Possibly to 
many of those who voted for the measure some of 
its provisions appeared to be " glittering generalities " ; 
yet not even the slavery provision itself was of more 
substantial benefit to the Northwest than has been and 
still is the pregnant sentence: "Keligion, morality, and 
knowledge being necessar}*- to good government and the 
happiness of mankind, schools and the means of edu- 
cation shall forever be encouraged." Those twenty- 
four words were to the Northwest at once the charter 



1 Cooley's Michigan, p. 127. 
328 



THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY 

and the endowment of that novel and wide-spread sys- 
tem of public education, beginning at the primary school 
and extending through the university and professional 
schools, which speedily created in the new West a body 
of educational institutions to take the place of the en- 
dowed academies and colleges of the East. For more 
than a century that phrase has been both the incen- 
tive of the friend of learning in urging and the justifi- 
cation of the penurious legislator in granting those 
appropriations from the public treasury by means of 
which the Northwest has provided herself with a well- 
educated body of citizens. Taking the ordinance in its 
entirety, it would seem as if the nation, wearied by its 
own struggles to obtain freedom from the laws and cus- 
toms of the past, had determined that its children 
should step forth into the world free from their very 
birth. 

Who shall trace the origin of the Ordinance of 1787 ? 
Like a tree, its roots were deep down in a free soil, and 
its leaves drank nourishment from an air filled with the 
makings of constitutions. Jefferson had planted, and 
Monroe and Kufus King had watered, the tender plant. 
The vital force, however, came from neither earth nor 
air; from neither the planting nor the nurture of the 
fathers of the republic. Up to the 6th day of July, 1787, 
the government of the Northwest had been almost 
purely an academic question ; on that day it became 
the most tangible of all the measures before Congress. 
This marvellous change was wrought by Manasseh Cut- 
ler, a Massachusetts minister, who appeared in New 
York with a proposition to buy a million dollars' worth 
of Western lands. The coming of Cutler signified that 
both the men and the money were at hand to develop 
the Northwest, and that the time had come to legislate 

329 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

to meet not a theory but a condition. The undertaking 
had been long in preparation, and the men behind it 
were of proved ability and worth. 1 • 

Into the camp at Cambridge, just after the battles of 
Concord and Lexington, came Rufus Putnam, a tall, 
sturdy, self-reliant but modest lieutenant-colonel of a 
Worcester County, Massachusetts, militia regiment. At 

1 The literature on the subject of the authorship of the Ordinance 
of 1787 is voluminous, and the majority of writers give the credit al- 
most exclusively to Cutler. This list comprises, among others. Senator 
Hoar, Edward Everett Hale, and the late Dr. "William F. Poole. In 
controversial historical literature of recent times it would be difficult 
to find a more ruthless assault on author and theory than Dr. Poole 
made on the argument of the late Henry A. Chaney, attributing the 
authorship of the measure most largely to Nathan Dane. Dr. Poole's 
address before the American Historical Society in 1888 sets forth his 
theory that Cutler brought, the ordinance from New England and 
forced it on the committee of Congress as a prerequisite to the land 
purchase he proposed. Mr. Frederick D. Stone, librarian of the 
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, in a calm review of the different 
arguments ( The Ordinance of 1787). reaches the conclusion that there 
is no evidence to show that Cutler had anything to do with the essen- 
tial features of the measure. On the contrary, he went to New York 
prepared to purchase lands under the Ordinance of 1784, provided he 
could make suitable arrangements with the Board of Treasury. Mr. 
Stone gives Dane the credit for making up t lie bill from the existing 
law, and taking the opportunity on the floor of the House to insert 
the slavery clause with a proviso satisfactory to the South. After a 
careful study of the diary and letters of Cutler, of the State Depart- 
ment MSS., and of the documeuts in the library of the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, I am convinced Cutler's appearance with the money 
to purchase, and the organization to people, the Western lands made 
it possible to secure from Congress a fundamental law in accord with 
the repeatedly expressed desires of the New Eugland promoters. So 
long as slavery was prohibited only north of the Ohio, the Southern 
members might well have acquiesced in that provision, "because they 
might have foreseen what actually came to pass— that the prohibition 
of slavery north of the Ohio would hasten the settlement of Kentucky 
and the Western lauds of the Southern States, and would retard emi- 
gration to the country north of the great river. 

330 



'c- - 



PS 







UUFUS PUTNAM 




; -■ -- - ■,*,-■. 

GENERAL RUPD8 PUTNAM'S LAND-OFFICE 



THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY 

the age of nineteen he had entered the old French war, 
and at the age of thirty-seven he had acquired such a 
reputation as an engineer that Washington fixed upon 
him as the man to construct the works that were to 
force the evacuation of Boston. By one of those chances 
which are the raw material of genius, this self-taught 
engineer, while pondering over the difficulties presented 
by frozen ground, stumbled on Midler's Field Engineer, 
and from the book learned how to make a "chandelier" 
of timber and bundles of brush. On the morning of 
March 5, 1776, Sir William Howe saw himself hemmed 
in by long lines of intrenchments framed in a night, and 
so extensive that a month would scarcely have sufficed 
his army to build them. There was no escape but in 
evacuation ; and as the result of his labors, Rufus Put- 
nam had the satisfaction of seeing his cousin Israel, at 
the head of the first victorious army, march through the 
winding streets of Boston. Such was the first great 
triumph of one whom Washington called the ablest en- 
gineer officer of the war, whether American or French- 
man ; his second notable work was fortifying West 
Point. 

The Revolution ended, Putnam returned to the little 
Rutland, Massachusetts, farm-house, that to-day stands 
as a memorial of him, there to scheme and plan the 
building, not of fortifications but of a state — " a new 
state westward of the Ohio," as Timothy Pickering 
puts it.' In 1783 Putnam sent to Washington a pe- 

1 Senator George F. Hoar has told the story of Putnam in his ora- 
tion at the Marietta centennial ; and also in his address on " Rufus 
Putnam, Founder and Father of Ohio," on the occasion of placing a 
tablet to the memory of Putnam, upon his dwelling-house in Rutland, 
September 17, 1898. I am much indebted to Senator Hoar for copies 
of these excellent examples of his eloquence and scholarship. 

331 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

tition to Congress signed by 288 officers, who prayed 
for the location and survey of the Western lands ; and 
the next year Washington writes his old friend that he 
has tried in vain to have Congress take action. Ap- 
pointed one of the surveyors of the Northwestern lands, 
Putnam sent General Tupper in his stead ; and on the 
return of the latter from Pittsburg, the two spent a long 
January night in framing a call to officers and soldiers 
of the war, and all other good citizens of Massachusetts 
who desired to And new homes on the Ohio. On March 
4, 1786, the Ohio Company was formed at the " Bunch of 
Grapes" tavern in Boston; and Putnam, Reverend Ma- 
nasseh Cutler, and General Samuel H. Parsons were made 
the directors. 1 The winter was spent in perfecting the 
plan ; then Parsons was sent to New York to secure a 
grant of lands and the passage of an act for a govern- 
ment. He failed. Putnam now turned to his other 
fellow -director, Cutler. On July 6, 1787, the polished 
and courtly ex-chaplain, and the greatest naturalist of 
his day in America, entered the chamber where Con- 
gress was sitting, and in his most felicitous manner laid 
before the statesmen his proposition. He promised 
much, and he demanded much. The restless veterans of 
the war were to be provided for ; a large portion of the 
bothersome and burdensome public debt was to be ex- 
tinguished ; this sale of lands would lead to others, and 
the value of all would be increased ; the frontiers of 
Virginia and Maryland would be protected against the 
savages; and Spain and England would intrigue in vain 

1 A copy of "The Articles of an Association by the name of the 
Ohio Company, printed in Worcester, Mass., by Isaiah Thomas, 1786," 
is preserved in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 
Article II. recites that the purchase of lands is to be made under the 
law of May 20, 1783, "or other legislation." 

332 



THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY 

for the control of the Western country. In return he 
asked for a free soil, for the promotion of education, 
and for the machinery of government. 

Having secured the passage of the Ordinance, Dr. 
Cutler next turned his attention to a law for the sale 
of lands. The first committee having been made up 
largely from the Committee on Lands, there was little 
difficulty in securing a favorable report, for the Ordi- 
nance had been based on the land scheme. In order to 
carry the project through Congress, however, it was 
expedient to parcel out the offices. General Parsons, 
one of the directors of the Ohio Company, having been 
selected privately for the office of governor, Cutler 
shifted him to a judgeship ; the governorship was 
promised to General Arthur St. Clair, the President 
of Congress; and Major Sargent was slated for the 
place of secretary. Ten days after the passage of the 
ordinance, the land-contract measure was adopted; but 
inasmuch as its provisions were not satisfactory to Dr. 
Cutler he suggested modifications, and enforced his 
views by a threat to leave New York unless they were 
acceded to. Again he was successful, and on July 27 
he found himself the possessor of a grant of five million 
acres of land, one half for the Ohio Company, and one 
half for a private speculation which became known as 
the Scioto Purchase. Congress on its part was able 
to retire some three and a half millions of outstand- 
ing script, and to reduce the public debt by that 
amount. 

While the officers of the new territory were virtual- 
ly settled upon at this time, it was not until October 
5th that Congress elected Arthur St. Clair governor ; 
James M. Varnum, Samuel Holden Parsons, and John 
Armstrong judges ; and Winthrop Sargent, secretary ; 

333 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

subsequently John Cleves Sy mines took the place of Mr. 
Armstrong, who declined the appointment.' 

On August 20th, Dr. Cutler met the directors and 
agents of the Ohio Company at the "Bunch of Grapes" 
to report that he had made a contract with the Board 
of Treasury for a million dollars 1 worth of lands at a 
net price of seventy -five cents an acre ; that the lands 
were to be located on the Ohio, between the Seven 
Ranges platted under the direction of Congress and the 
Virginia lands; that lands had been reserved by the 
government for school and university purposes, accord- 
ing to the Massachusetts plan; and that bounty lands 
might be located within the tract. The next day the 
plat of a city on the Muskingum was settled upon, ami 
proposals for saw-mill and corn-mill sites were invited 
from prospective settlers. 3 So it happened that the 
future State of Ohio was planned in a Boston tavern. 

" It would give you pain, aud me no pleasure," writes 
the founder of Ohio to his co-laborer, Dr. Cutler, " to 
detail our march over the mountains, or our delays on 
account of bad weather, or other misfortunes." A num- 
ber of ship-carpenters from Danvers were sent ahead ; 
but when, on the 14th of February, 177S, the main party 
of New England pilgrims arrived at the Youghiogheny 
they found no boats and no boards or planks to build 
any. no persons able even to hollow out a canoe, the saw- 
mill frozen up, and small-pox prevailing. The ablest 
engineer of the Revolutionary army, however, was not 
to be discouraged. On April 1st the party embarked, and 
seven days later they ran upon the banks of the Muskin- 
gum the prows of the forty-five ton galley Adventure 

1 Iu July, 17S9. the first Congress of the United States gave its 
sanction to the new government. 
' Life of lie i-£ re mi Manamh Cutler, vol. i., p. 3.21. 

331 




.H.\.VY»hJl CUTLKK 



THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY 

afterwards appropriately rechristened the Mayflower; 
also the Adelphia, a three-ton ferry ; and three log 
canoes. First to greet them was the famous Captain 
Pipe, a Delaware of unlimited curiosity, who was quite 
accustomed to speak his mind plainly to white men, 
whether Englishmen or Americans. 1 l With the Indians 
came the garrison from Fort Harmar to give a Conti- 
nental welcome to the home-makers ; and speedily all 
was activit}\ Lands were cleared, a hundred acres were 
planted with corn, and maple-sugar making added jol- 
lity to the toil. The site selected for the town was a 
level thirty feet above the Muskingum and on the eastern 
side of that stream at its junction with the Ohio, where 
once the Mound-builders had made a restiug-place, set- 
ting up an arrow factory and heaping up piles of dirt 
for scientists to battle over to this day. For a name, 
Marietta was chosen by way of compliment to Marie 
Antoinette, gracious friend of the struggling colonies. 
"We of to-day laugh at the pseudo-classicism of times 
that rejected the unpronounceable Indian names in fa- 
vor r" Latinized appellations ; but the Campus Martius, 
the V 1a Sacra, the Capitolium, and the Quadranaon of 
Marietta, like the names under which Jefferson would 
nothered the states of the Xorthwest, soon disap- 
, leaving us the memorials of that period an archi- 
•, both public and domestic, that is pure, simple, 
il. an tately. They were not pedants, but ideal- 
ist.-, ho r e seat of their backwoods university 

On uhe morning of the 9th of July the boom of a 
I gun awoke the echoes between the forest-lined 

U. settlers known that Captain Pipe was one of the mur- 
f Crawford, his greetings would not have been so warmly 
ited. 

335 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

hanks of the broad Ohio, and soon a barge, hurried by 
the swift current and twelve stalwart watermen, turned 
into the Muskingum and swung up to the rude landing, 
place at Marietta. The Governor of the Northwest Ter- 
ritory had arrived at the capital. It was a great day for 
the new colony ; and with the true New Englandera 
love of dignity and order, the} 7 were determined to make 
the most of it. The Revolutionary veteran General 
llarmar and his handful of soldiers from the fort were 
drawn up in line, the burnished gun-barrels glistening in 
the July sun ; there too was Rufus Putnam, unwearied 
surveyor, matchless engineer, veteran soldier and founder 
of the great state that was to be ; and Judge Yarnum, 
who, apostrophizing the new governor in sonorous 
periods on the nation's birthday, had called on the 
gently flowing Ohio to " bear him, oh bear him safely 
to this anxious spot," and on the " beautiful, transparent 
Muskingum to swell at the moment of his approach and 
reflect no objects but of pleasure and delight !" Amidst 
the ruffle of drums and the booming of the l'i ' lute 
of fourteen guns, the commanding figure < inor 

Arthur St. Clair stepped from the barge ol i lose- 

lv followed by Judge Parsons and Secret: gent. 

Attended by the towns- people, they advanced to the 
Campus Martins, where the secretary die ordi- 

nance and the commissions of the officer? gover- 

nor expatiated to his New -England the ad- 

vantages of good government! Gi\ bs often 

follow upon unheralded beginnings; b vas no 

lack of appreciation of this auspicious occ i 'Dur- 
ing the address of his Excellency," write: wit- 
ness, " a profound veneration for the elevated ud 
exalted benevolence of the speaker; the magi ) 
the subject; the high importance of the occas ; t^ 

886 



' 



1 




GENERAL ARTHUR ST. < LAIK 



THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY 

immense consequences resulting ; the glory, the grandeur 
of the new world unfolding ; heaven and earth approv- 
ing, called forth all the manly emotions of the heart." 

Indeed, the good people of Marietta had reason to 
be proud of their new officials, and particularly of their 
governor. Born in Caithness, of an ancient Scotch 
family, the early death of his pleasure-loving father had 
left Arthur St. Clair to the care of a mother as intelli- 
gent as she was devoted ; and after a course of study at 
the University of Edinburgh, and a short indenture as a 
student of medicine, at the age of twenty-three he was 
commissioned an ensign in the Royal Americans, the 
regiment of his friends Henry Bouquet and Haldimand. 
With Amherst, in the siege of Louisburg, he had earned 
a lieutenancy even before he climbed the Plains of 
Abraham, and, inspired by the undaunted courage of 
Wolfe, had caught up the colors from the hand of their 
dying defender and had borne them where the battle 
raged fiercest. From war to love is the shortest of 
steps; and no sooner had the British ships appeared 
before Quebec, bringing the aid that made the romantic 
New France into the prosaic Canada, than the dashing 
young soldier betook himself to Boston to marry Phoebe 
Bayard, the niece of Governor James Bowdoin. 

With the remains of his own fortune added to the 
abundant patrimony of his wife, St. Clair purchased in 
the beautiful Ligonier valley a large estate to add to 
the lands he had located under the king's grant ; and 
there, in the year after Bouquet's victory over the Ind- 
ians at Bushy Run, St. Clair settled. He built a substan- 
tial house and a grist-mill, became a state surveyor, a 
justice of the court of quarter-sessions, a member of the 
Proprietary, and afterwards recorder of deeds, clerk of 
the orphans' court, and prothonotary. In his capacity 
y 337 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE EL AGS 

as a Pennsylvania magistrate, St. Clair had Lord Dun- 
more's commandant, Dr. Conolly, arrested and placed 
in jail for usurpation at Pittsburg, and when his lord- 
ship demanded that St. Clair be punished, Governor 
Penn told the Governor of Virginia that he was dicta- 
torial. At the outbreak of the Ee volution St. Clair 
acted as secretaiy at the Indian council held at Fort 
Pitt, and while there engaged between four and five 
hundred young men for an expedition against Detroit. 
Delayed for the want of powder, an application was 
made to Congress, only to receive the reply that Ar- 
nold would soon capture Quebec, and Detroit would 
fall with the capital, so the expedition would be unnec- 
essary ! The difference between St. Clair and George 
Rogers Clark w T as that Clark got the powder. Mean- 
time St. Clair's Boston relatives had not forgotten him. 
In December, 1775, President Hancock called him to 
Philadelphia ; he was instructed to raise a regiment 
and start for Quebec; he did so, and arrived just in 
time to cover Arnold's retreat. Elected a brigadier by 
Congress, St. Clair joined Washington on his retreat 
through New Jersey, and until the close of the Revolu- 
tion was an active, faithful, and even brilliant com- 
mander. Returning to civil life impoverished in fort- 
une, he was chosen to the Continental Congress, over 
the last session of which he presided. And now, at the 
age of fifty -four, his chestnut hair but little touched 
with white, and his polished manners winning favor 
from every one on whom his blue-gray eyes smiled, he 
had come to preside at the making of a state. 

His companions in office were not unworthy asso- 
ciates. Winthrop Sargent had been born in rocky 
Gloucester thirty-five } T ears before, had graduated from 
Harvard College, had served through the Revolution 

338 



THE NORTH WES1 TERRITORY 

as captain of artillery and as major on staff duty, had 
tramped through the country on the upper Ohio while 
surveying one of the Seven Ranges laid out in 1786 
by oider of Congress, and now was entering on a long 
and honorable career in civil life. Like Sargent, Judjre 
Samuel Holden Parsons was a Harvard graduate, and 
had seen distinguished service in the Revolution, rising 
to the grade of major-general He had been active in 
promoting the interests of the Ohio Company, and, as 
has been said, was Cutler's original choice for govern- 
or. Unfortunately for the colony this sagacious and 
influential founder was drowned the next year at the 
rapids of the Big Beaver. The second judge, James M. 
Yarnum, a Dracut man. a brigadier-general at twenty- 
eight, a member of the Continental Congress at thirty- 
one, and a judge at thirty-nine, was one of the direc- 
tors of the company during the remaining six months 
of his short life. 1 

Either human ingenuity never devised a more con- 
tentious form of government than that known as " The 
Governor and Judges." or else Revolutionary officers 
were not the best stuff out of which to make executive 
and judicial officials. 2 No sooner had the judges begun 
to make a patchwork of pieces from the laws of the 
states — as they were restricted to doing — than ti. 
necessity began to stretch their quilt by enacting origi- 

1 Rufus Putnam succeeded Vamum, serving until 1796 r when he 
was made surveyor-general, and was succeeded by Joseph Gillman, of 
Point Harmar. Parsons was succeeded by George Turner, who re- 
signed in 1796, Return Jonathan MeigE ling him. Xo other 
changes were made before Ohio became a - Paper*, 
vol. i., p. 145. 

5 General William Hull was so badgered by the judges of Michigan 
Territory that it is small wonder he lost all vigor and stamina before 
the War of 1812. 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

nal legislation ; and when the cautious governor would 
have interposed his veto, they told him he had no such 
prerogative under the law. To the governor this seemed 
to smack of tyranny. In his strictures on the militia bill, 
General St. Clair made it plain to Major-general Par- 
sons and Brigadier - general Varnum that they knew 
very little about military matters; but a militia law was 
passed, as were also laws establishing courts, punishing 
profanity, regulating marriages and ministers, and pro- 
viding for a Christian Sabbath. 1 

Colonel John May, of Boston, one of the members of 
the Ohio Company, has left on record a graphic descrip- 
tion of early days on the beautiful river. In the year 
1788 it was no light matter to undertake a journey from 
the capital of Massachusetts to the seat of government of 
the Northwest. On May 5, after a tedious and fatiguing 
horseback journey of twenty -two days, Colonel May 
arrived at Pittsburg, " a place by no means elegant, and 
the people not so industrious as he had seen." The river 
was fairly alive with great boats carrying home-seekers 
to the fertile regions below. No fewer than two hundred 
and fifty of these craft had been counted that spring, 
and probably as many more went down by night, when 
no tally was kept. On one of these boats Colonel May 
counted twenty-nine whites, twenty-four negroes, nine 
dogs, twenty-three horses, cows and hogs, besides pro- 
visions. It went to the heart of the thrifty Bostonian 
that this enormous emigration was bound for Kentucky, 
where there were no restrictions as to slavery, and that 
his own party was only the second one destined for the 
region of freedom. 

While a great majority of the boats passed down the 



State Department MSS. relating to the Northwest Territory. 
340 



THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY 

river safely, yet Indian attacks were so frequent as to 
give hazard to the journey. Indeed, while Colonel Ma}' 
was waiting at Pittsburg, news came that on the 20th 
of March three Kentucky-bound boats were attacked by 
the savages near the Big Miami ; and that among those 
killed were Samuel Purviance, a Baltimore patriot, and 
three French scientists who were bent on exploring the 
country. After a fortnight spent in the society of those 
hospitable soldiers of the Revolution who were making 
their homes at Pittsburg, Colonel May cast-off the fasts 
of his flat-boat and committed himself to the current of 
the Ohio. "Without wind or waves, at a speed of five 
miles an hour, the party of twenty-seven men (besides 
cows and calves, dogs and hogs) were borne towards 
their wilderness home. Through thunder-storm and 
sunshine the boat drifted on its course, now between 
high banks, and again past broad stretches of fertile 
bottom-lands. On the Virginia bank the house of some 
settler, like Ebenezer Zane, occasionally gave human in- 
terest to the prospect, and after a voyage of scarcely 
fifty hours they had the good fortune to reach the Mus- 
kingum in safety. 

By day there was work in plenty for all. Speedily 
the axe was laid at the root of the trees, and an acre 
and a half of clearing was reckoned a good day's work. 
So the week would pass, and on Sunday General Harmar 
would send his barge to bring to his hospitable board 
the veterans of war and the pioneers of peace. " As 
elegant a table as any in Boston " was spread at Fort 
Harmar : for solids there were bacon gammon, venison 
tongues, roast and boiled lamb, barbecued and a la mode 
beef, perch and catfish, lobsters and oysters — or what 
passed as such ; for vegetables there were green peas, 
radishes, and salads ; and " for drink, spirits, excellent 

341 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

wine, brandy, and beer." "With stories of the camp and 
plans for the field the short afternoon was spent ; and 
after a cup of tea, the refreshed settlers were rowed 
across the Muskingum to their stockade home. 1 

September 2d was set apart for the formal installa- 
tion of the judges of the newly created courts for the 
new county of Washington, then consisting of one hun- 
dred and thirty-two people. Again General Harmar had 
the muskets of the garrison polished for the occasion ; 
the governor and judges were on hand; and Sheriff and 
Colonel of Militia Ebenezer Sproat, with drawn sword 
and wand of office, marched at the head of the proces- 
sion with all the dignity and impressiveness of his pro- 
totype, the Sheriff of Middlesex, at a Harvard com- 
mencement. Persons being more limited than offices, 
Rufus Putnam was made both justice of the peace and 
also judge of probate, and on Return Jonathan Meigs 
two clerkships were bestowed. To add lustre to the occa- 
sion, the Reverend Manasseh Cutler was present to offer 
prayer. In response to Sheriff Sproat's stentorian dec- 
laration that the court of common pleas was " open for 
the administration of even-handed justice to the poor 
and the rich, the guilty and the innocent, without re- 
spect to persons," Paul Fearing presented himself to 
be admitted as the first lawyer in the Northwest Ter- 
ritory ; then the court adjourned to await the commis- 
sion of crime. One smiles to note the seriousness with 
which these six-score-and-ten pioneers transplanted to 
the wilderness a system of government so complete that 
it would answer the manifold necessities of a nation — 
at least, in so far as internal relations were concerned ; 
but wisdom was justified by her children. 



Journal and Letters of Colonel John May (Cincinnati, 1873). 
342 



THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY 

While the Marietta settlers were busy among the 
buckeyes and the maples, another colony was planting 
itself farther down the river. While Cutler was in 
New York lobbying the ordinance and land grant 
through Congress, he found that in order to obtain the 
requisite number of votes he would be compelled to 
make terms with Colonel William Duer, who promised 
that the bills should pass provided the Ohio Company 
would stand sponsor for twice the amount of land 
needed, and allow Colonel Duer's friends to take the 
other half. The result was that Dr. Cutler and Win- 
throp Sargent made contracts with the Treasury, not 
only for the Ohio Company's lands but also for the 
landSj they afterwards ceded to the Scioto Company, in 
which latter corporation they retained an interest that 
they shared with Putnam, Parsons, and other friends, 
including Barlow the poet and Apothecary - general 
Craigie, whose house in Cambridge Washington and 
Longfellow have made famous by occupying it. Bar- 
low, acting as agent in Paris, disposed of Scioto lands 
to a French company, which in turn sold in small par- 
cels before making payment to Barlow. On October 20, 
1790, the first of the French immigrants arrived at 
Gallipolis, where by Putnam's energy houses had been 
built for them. There was dissatisfaction on the part 
of the leaders, questions as to good faith on the part of 
the American promoters, incompetency on Barlow's side, 
and fraud in the French company ; there were Indian 
wars, and a financial panic in which Duer, Craigie, and 
the moneyed men of the Ohio Company went to the 
wall ; but in spite of all the settlement at Gallipolis 
persisted. 1 

1 For the intricate history of the Scioto Company, see the appendix 
to Life of Manasseh Cutler, vol. i. 

343 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

For the first two years at Marietta the settlers suffered 
comparatively little from Indian attacks, a fact due not 
only to the practice of planting with a hoe in the right 
hand and a rifle in the left, but also to the protection 
afforded by the guns and garrison of Fort Harmar. 1 
This group of seven or eight buildings clustered about a 
strong block -house and surrounded by a palisade, had 
been constructed in 1785 by Major Doughty, the first 
commander of the artillery of the United States under 
the Constitution. Commanding both the Ohio and the 
Muskingum rivers, the post was at this time the most 
important military station in the country ; for while 
West Point and Springfield each had but a single com- 
pany of artilleiy, the Ohio Kiver posts were garrisoned 
by 596 men out of the entire United States army of 
672 men ; and of this remnant General Josiah Harmar 
was the commander. So sweeping had been the reduc- 
tion of the Continental army. As settlers increased 
and cabins came to be located on the watercourses, the 
savages grew more and more restless, while the British 
became apprehensive lest an attempt should be made to 
seize the frontier posts.' 

1 Life of Manasseh Cutler, vol. i., p. 389. 

s Soley's "Wars of the United States," in The Narrative and Critical 
History of America, vol. vii., pp. 357, 449. 



CHAPTER X 

THE UNITED STATES WIN THE NORTHWEST POSTS 

A national domain implies national defence. "When 
the general government came into the title to the North- 
west and made laws and appointed officers for its govern- 
ment, the duty of protecting settlers and enforcing law 
and order devolved on the nation. With Washington 
as the Chief Executive, there could be no question that 
patiently, persistently, surely the national boundaries 
would be rounded out until the stars and stripes should 
float over every frontier post and the power of the 
United States be made supreme throughout the whole 
territory. The Indians were becoming reconciled to 
the sovereignty of the United States, and even Joseph 
Brant was looking forward to the inevitable day when 
the British should no longer be able to maintain the 
frontier posts. Indeed, that chiefs allegiance to the 
English had been shaken for the time being by a council 
of his enemies, who filled Lord Dorchester's mind with 
charges and complaints against the chief of the Mohawks 
in his dealings with the Grand River lands. After re- 
pelling these attacks he relapsed into literary labors, 
translating the liturgy of the Church of England into 
the Mohawk language. 1 In January, 1789, however, 

1 On July 20, 1789, President Joseph Willard, of Harvard College, 
acknowledged the receipt of a copy of this work. — Stone's Life of 
Joseph Brant, vol. ii., p. 287. 

345 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Brant was present at the treaty of Fort Harmar nego- 
tiated by Governor St. Clair, at the mouth of the Mus- 
kingum.' 

By this treaty the Lake Indians ratified the treaty of 
Fort Mcintosh in 1785, by the terms of which the Ind- 
ians kept the country south of Lake Erie, from the Cuya- 
hoga to the Miami, and extending south to about the 
fortieth degree of north latitude, the Indians retaining 
the right of hunting throughout the entire country 
north of the Ohio, and the Americans reserving sites for 
trading posts within the Indian reservation. The lands 
along the west bank of the Detroit, and a tract twelve 
miles square at Michilimaekinac also v were granted to 
the Americans; and the two parties to the treaty mut- 
uallv agreed to £'ive each other warning of hostile in- 
tentions against either. A copy of this treaty fell into 
Lord Dorchester's hands, and he immediately communi- 
cated its provisions to Lord Sidney, with the further 
information that those Indian nations not parties to the 
treaty " seem now determined to remove and prevent 
all American settlements northwest of the Ohio." In 
consonance with this plan a large party of Wabash and 
Miami Indians appeared at Detroit, with the intention 
of presenting the war-pipe to the commanding officer; 
but the execution of this design was prevented by the 
prudent management of McKee, who privately discov- 
ered the plan and convinced the chiefs of the impropri- 
ety of such action. 3 

The Indians, however, had begun to feel the pressure 
of the white settlements on the Ohio. Five hundred 
savages from the Great Miami removed to the Glaize, 



1 Haidx Dorchester to Sidney, January 10. 17i 

- Ealdimand Papers. Dorchester to Sidney. June 25. 1TS9. 
346 



UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

a stream falling into Lake Erie near its head ; and 
others had already begun to look to the Spanish side of 
the Mississippi for new hunting-grounds. Dorchester 
was disturbed by these indications, and he viewed with 
apprehension the efforts of St. Clair and Congress to 
gain control over the Indians. Particularly was he 
concerned over the gathering of a large body of troops 
on the Ohio. " The pretence to the public," he wrote 
to Sidney, " is to repel the Indians ; but those who 
must know better and see that an Indian war does not 
require so great a force, nor that very large proportion 
of artillery, are given to understand that part of these 
forces are to take possession of the frontier, as settled 
by treaty, to seize the posts and secure the fur-trade ; a 
more secret motive, perhaps, is to reduce the state gov- 
ernments and crush all internal opposition." 

Dorchester, however, had little fear of a successful at- 
tack on the upper posts, all of which had been repaired 
and provisioned during the previous year. Yet he ad- 
mitted that Detroit could be defended only against Ind- 
ians, and must depend on their fidelity together with 
that of the militia, and on the ability of the comman- 
dant ; that Niagara could make a good defence, provid- 
ed the militia behaved well ; that Michilimackinac could 
keep out only Indians ; that Fort Ontario was not and 
could not be defended at all ; and that the works on the 
Sorel were all very bad. 1 

That the British had no intention of yielding the 
posts immediately is made evident from the fact that 
those in the upper country were repaired during 1789. 
In preparation, however, for ultimate surrender, Captain 
Gother Mann, of the Royal Engineers, made a tour of 

1 Haldimand Papers. Dorcbester to Sidney, March 8, 1790. 
347 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

x the lakes during the summer of 1788, for the purpose 
of a detailed examination of forts and channels. At 
Detroit he found Fort Lernoult in a fair state of re- 
pair, the inhabitants having furnished the pickets for 
a new palisade about the town ; but the navy-yard, be- 
ing beyond the defences, was hopelessly open to attack. 
He selected as the site for the new post a location op- 
posite Bois Blanc, whence the guns could command the 
channels on either side of that island ; and the opening 
events of the War of 1812 amply justified his foresight. 
Sinclair's fort on the island of Michiliraackinac he 
found on too extensive a scale for defence against the 
Indians, and " far too little against cannon, and most of 
that ill-judged." At Sault Ste. Marie the lands on the 
American side of the line were the better; but for 
business purposes there was room enough on the east- 
ern shore ; and, besides, the white-fish resorted to that 
bank, and the fish -packing business was already exten- 
sive. Further, he recommended vessels of fifty tons for 
the navigation of the upper lakes, that limit being 
fixed because of the bars at the mouth of the St. Clair 
River and the rapids at the head of that stream ; and 
he strongly advised against continuing the practice of 
building flat - bottomed vessels for lake navigation. 1 
Beyond this, the Indian agent McKee negotiated the 
purchase from the savages of the lands on the east side 
of the Detroit River. 3 

Meanwhile the Indians of the "Wabash and the Mi- 
ami, joined by the Shawanese on the Scioto (whose reg- 
ular occupation, according to Brant, was horse-stealing), 

1 Gother Mann to Dorchester, December 6, 1788. This letter is 
printed out of its order in the Haldimand Collection given in the 
Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections. See vol. xii., p. 35. 

8 Ibid., Colonel McKee to Land Board, p. 28. 

348 



UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

made the passage of the Ohio a voyage of apprehension 
and peril. In June, 1790, information came to Detroit 
that the Indians on the Ohio, in the course of hostilities, 
had gone so far as to burn one of their white prisoners, 
a proceeding that brought a message of remonstrance 
from that post. That same month eight Americans who 
had escaped from the Indians, and in September thirteen 
prisoners brought to Detroit by the Ohio raiders, were 
sent back to Fort Pitt by the British, and pains were 
taken to express to the savages the king's displeasure. 1 
So aggressive had these Indian attacks become that 
President Washington decided that the time was ripe 
to use something stronger and more tangible than 
treaties. In pursuance of this idea a call was made on 
Kentucky for 1000 and on Pennsylvania for 500 militia 
to join the regulars at Fort Washington, built on the 
present site of Cincinnati. 

During the latter half of September, 1790, the militia 
came in : not the smart, active backwoodsmen on whose 
trusty rifles Washington had been accustomed to rely 
during the Revolution, but old and infirm men and even 
boys, substitutes, many of whom had never fired a gun. 
Indeed, the arms they brought represented a greater 
variety and quantity of useless weapons than it was 
supposed all Kentucky could produce ; there were guns 
without locks and barrels without stocks, carried by 
men who did not know how to oil a lock or fit a flint. 
Added to this were the disputes as to who should com- 
mand the Kentuckians ; and these were calmed only by 

1 Haldimand Papers. Dorchester to Grenville, June 21 and Septem- 
ber 25, 1790. Possibly some of these captives were taken at Big Bot- 
tom in January, when the Ohio Company's town, forty miles up the 
Muskingum, was cut off, with a loss of fourteen killed and three 
captured. 

349 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

placing the popular Colonel Trotter over the Blue-grass 
battalions and giving to his senior, Colonel Hardin, the 
command of all the militia. On the 3d of October the 
march to the Miami villages began ; and so far as regu- 
lations and foresight could go with such a body of men, 
General Harmar seems not to have been wanting. But 
the pack-horses escaped, as it was for the financial ad- 
vantage of their drivers to have them lost ; and gen- 
eral inefficiency begot demoralization everywhere save 
among the little band of 320 regulars, 1 with whom, un- 
fortunately, the militia were too jealous to serve effec- 
tively. 2 

On October 13th a patrol of horsemen captured a 
Shawanese Indian, who reported that the savages were 
nowhere in force; thereupon Colonel Hardin was de- 
tached with six hundred light troops to push for the 
Miami villages, on the present site of Fort Wayne, and 
to surprise the Indians. Instead of the enemy he found 
their deserted and still burning towns. The main body 
of the army having come up, Colonel Trotter with a 
small force was sent out for a three days' scout ; but, 
having satisfied himself by killing two Indians, he re- 
turned the first evening. Then Hardin, anxious to re- 
trieve the disgrace brought upon the militia by Trotter's 
failure, sought and obtained permission to discover the 
enem}*-. Confident that the Indians would not fight, 
Hardin proceeded carelessly until, coming upon a party 
of perhaps a hundred savages, the militia, all save nine, 
broke and fled at the first fire, more scared by the war- 
whoop than hurt by the bullets of their foes. The reg- 
ulars stood their ground, and twenty-four of them, with 

1 American State Papers, Military Affairs, vol. i., Proceedings of 
the Court of Inquiry on General Harmar. 

■ Perkins's Western Annals (Cincinnati, 1846), p. 342. 

350 



UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

the nine militia-men, met death ; but of the retreating 
militia some never stopped until they had crossed the 
Ohio. 1 The army having burned the houses in five vil- 
lages, and corn to the amount of twenty thousand bush- 
els, began its homeward march. General Ilarmar, anx- 
ious to achieve some success, now detached four hundred 
choice men — militia and regulars — to return to the 
burned villages in the hope of finding some Indians at 
the scene of disaster. Major Wyllys, of the regulars, 
was placed in command ; but he was absolutely unable 
to control the militia, who ran off in pursuit of small 
parties of the enemy, leaving the brave major and his 
band of regulars to meet death at the hands of Little 
Turtle's braves. The best of the militia and of the reg- 
ulars were now dead ; and nothing was left for the 
army but to struggle homeward as best they might. 
Probably not more than 150 Indians were engaged in 
the rout of an army of 1453 men. 3 

To Ilarmar and his friends the expedition was hailed 
as a success ; to the elated Indians it was an encourage- 
ment to renewed aggressions. Kufus Putnam was un- 
der no misapprehensions as to the result of the campaign. 
He knew that unless measures were taken speedily to 
punish the savages, the fate of the Ohio settlements was 
sealed. Already there were eighty houses at Marietta ; 
twenty-two miles up the Muskingum some twenty fami- 

1 Testimony of Lieutenant Armstrong, who says that Hardin ran 
with the militia. Armstrong was saved by dropping into a swamp. 
It was his opinion that Trotter might have surprised and captured the 
enemy the day before, had he persisted. Hardin was personally a 
brave man, but was not a good officer. 

2 Testimony of Lieutenant Denny. It appears from a letter to 
Brant, quoted by Smith (Life of Joseph Brant, vol. ii., p. 294), that the 
Indian loss was between fifteen and twenty. The Americans lost 
three regular and ten militia officers, and about five hundred men. 

351 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

lies had settled : ou "Wolf and Duck creeks mills had 
been built : at Belle Prairie, opposite the Little Kana- 
wha, between twenty and thirty houses were scattered 
along twelve miles of shore; and there were various 
other little settlements at the mercy of Indian attacks. 1 
Moreover, the excited Indians now dared to push their 
way into the Pennsylvania settlements on the Alleghany, 
murdering women and children and taking away cap- 
tives and horses. It is estimated that from 17S3 to 
October, 1790. no fewer than fifteen hundred men. 
women, and children were slain or captured by the Ind- 
ians in the Ohio country. 

It is necessary here to understand the theory on which 
the British were acting in regard to Indian troubles ; 
for much misapprehension exists on this point. In a 
letter to Brant, dated February 22, 1791. Sir John John- 
son writes that he and Lord Dorchester held that " the 
Americans had no claim to that part of the country be- 
yond the line established in 1765, at Fort Stanwix, be- 
tween the Indians and the governors and agents of all 
the provinces interested, and including the sales made 
since the war." Not being able to afford the Indians 
assistance in arms. Johnson thought the British should 
offer their mediation to bring about a peace on terms 
just and honorable." To a deputation of Indians who 
visited him. Lord Dorchester replied that the King of 
England had never given away the Indian lands, because 
he never possessed them : that the posts would be re- 
tained only until England and America could adjust 
their differences: and that although the Indians had the 
friendship and good-will of the English, the latter could 

'Putnam to "Washington, quoted in Perkins's Wet alt, p. 

345. 

fjoaeph Brant, vol. ii.. p. -97. 
352 



UNITED STATES WIN X CRT HATE ST POSTS 

not embark in war, but could only defend themselves if 
attacked. 1 

Chagrined and humiliated by Harmar's failure. "Wash- 
ington called Governor St. Clair to Philadelphia, placed 
him in command of an army to be organized for a new 
expedition : and. after impressing upon him the peril of 
ambush and surprise, sent him against the hostile tribes. 
The expedition was to be on an extensive scale ; but 
then as now the organization of the "War Department 
was thoroughly unfitted to deal with war. 

On March 3. 1791, Congress had authorized the organi- 
zation of the Second Regiment of Infantry, and at the 
same time had given to the President the power to enlist 
not more than 2000 men for six months, thus providing 
for an army of 412 S non-commissioned officers, privates, 
and musicians. A portion of this force was needed for 
garrison duty at Venango and Forts Harmar. "Washing- 
ton. Knox, and Steuben ; with the remainder General 
St. Clair was ordered to march to the site of the Miami 
towns and there establish himself. Recruiting was slow ; 
but on August 1st General "Wilkinson with a body of 
Kentucky horse advanced from the headquarters at 
Cincinnati, and on the 11th such of the First and Sec- 
ond Regiments as had arrived, together with Rbea's, 
Gaither's, and Patterson's levies, pushed on to Ludlow's 
Station, five miles from Cincinnati, the object of the 
movement being to withdraw the men from the de- 
baucheries of the town and to acquaint them in some 
degree with camp duties, of which both officers and 
soldiers were very generally ignorant. Eighteen miles 
from Ludlow's Station Fort Hamilton was built. 

General St. Clair being absent on recruiting duty, the 

1 Stone's Life of Joseph Brant, vol. i.. p. 299. 
z 353 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

command devolved on Major Hamtramck, or some other 
officer detailed for that duty; and it was not until Octo- 
ber 4th that the advance movement began, under the 
command of General Butler. It was a sorry army. 
"Picked up and recruited from the offscourings of large 
towns and cities ; enervated by idleness, debaucheries, 
and every species of vice, it was impossible they could 
have been made competent to the arduous duties of 
Indian warfare." At least such was the opinion of Ad- 
jutant-general Winthrop Sargent. He found, further, 
an extraordinary aversion to service, demonstrated by 
the most repeated desertions, in many instances to the 
very foe they were to combat ; the late period at which 
they were brought into the field left no leisure or oppor- 
tunity to attempt to discipline them ; and, moreover, 
they were badly clothed, .badly paid, and badly fed. 
The powder was bad, and " the military stores were 
sent on in the most infamous order." All these matters 
so worried St. Clair that he was worn out at the begin- 
ning of the campaign ;' and the continued delinquencies 
of the contractor were " one among the many primary 
causes " of defeat. 

On the 8th of October, when forty-four and one-quarter 
miles from Fort Washington, the flank guards fired un- 
successfully upon an Indian, the first one seen upon the 
march ; four days later the marksmen killed the savage 

1 Diary of Colonel Winthrop Sargent, Adjutant-general of the United 
States army during the campaign of 1791. The original manuscript 
of Colonel Sargent's diary was printed in 1851 in an edition of forty- 
six copies, with two plates, for George Wymberley - Jones, as the 
fourth of the series of Wormsloe quartos. The diary was then in the 
possession of Winthrop Sargent, of Philadelphia, a grandson of Colonel 
Sargent. The above quotations are made from the copy presented to 
Peter Force by Mr. Wymberly Jones, and now in the Library of Con- 
gress. 

354 




ST. CLAIR S ADVANCE DISCOVERED 



UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

they encountered, and secured a quantity of fresh peltry 
and four or five horses. So plentiful was the game and 
so great the temptation to kill it, that even the penalty 
of a hundred lashes could not keep the militia from 
firing, thus demoralizing discipline. On the 14th, sixty- 
eight and a half miles from Cincinnati, Fort Jefferson 
was laid out as a square log fort with four bastions, on 
" a pretty rising ground, terminating in gentle and low 
descents to east and west to a prairie." By the 17th, 
but one day's rations and one day's allowance of liquor 
remained ; the forage Avas nearly exhausted, and even 
had the troops been well disciplined matters would have 
been extremely serious. As it was the militia were dis- 
contented and insubordinate ; and, as the terms of their 
enlistment were about to expire, they were beginning to 
prepare to go home. Heavy rains and snow flurries 
added to the discomfort. The troops were put first 
upon half rations and afterwards upon quarter rations 
of bread ; and three hundred and fifty pack-horses with 
a company of much-needed riflemen were sent back 
for supplies. On the 23d three soldiers were exe- 
cuted — one for shooting an officer, and two for deser- 
tion. 

On November 3d, the army having proceeded ninety- 
seven miles from Cincinnati, camp was made " on a very 
handsome piece of rising ground," with a stream of forty 
feet in front, " running to the west." The army was in 
two lines, with four pieces of artillery in the centre of 
each ; Faulkner's company of riflemen upon the right 
flank with one troop of horse, and another troop of 
horse on the left. The militia encamped across the 
stream, three hundred yards away, " upon a high, exten- 
sive, fine flat of open woods." From abundant evidences 
the place was known to have been one of general resort 

355 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

for the Indians ; and indeed a party of fifteen departed 
as the troops advanced. 

This position, very defensible against regular troops, 
" was feeble to an Indian attack," because of the close 
woods near by, of the underbrush and fallen timber at 
hand, and of "an unfortunate ravine" and small swamps 
on the borders. A chain of sentinels around the camp, 
at a distance of fifty paces apart, constituted the princi- 
pal security against surprise. The militia detailed to 
explore the country pleaded fatigue, and such was the 
temper of the troops that the command could not be en- 
forced. At midnight Captain Stough, of the levies, sent 
out with a small force to prevent the horses from being 
stolen, was driven in by the Indians, but no report was 
made to headquarters. Occasional shots exchanged dur- 
ing the night led St. Clair to keep the men underarms; 
and on the morning of the 4th the army was turned 
out earlier than usual, and continued on parade until 
day began to break. A half hour before sunrise came 
the Indian 3 T ell, like " an infinitude of horse-bells," fol- 
lowed by an attack on the militia. Although occupy- 
ing a defensible position, the levies made no defence, 
but indulged in ' ; a most ignominious flight." Dashing 
helter-skelter into the camp of the regulars, the militia 
threw the forming battalions into some confusion; the 
fugitives even passed through the second line, and were 
checked only by the Indians completely surrounding 
the camp. Close upon the heels of the flying militia 
followed the Indians, who for a moment seemed as if 
determined to enter the camp ; but the array of fixed 
bayonets having cooled their ardor, they dropped be- 
hind logs and bushes, and at a distance of seventy 
yards began to pour a deadly fire into the closed ranks 
of the soldiers. Probably there were 1500 Indians; 

^356 



"UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

while of St. Clair's total army, aside from the militia 
of 13S0, not more than 10S0 — and those raw and un- 
disciplined troops — were available for battle. For two 
hours men who never before had fired even a blank- 
cartridge stood up against the unseen foe ; officers and 
men dropped fast, save in Clark's battalion and the 
riflemen on the right flank, who gave a good account of 
themselves, fighting after the Indian fashion. Butler's 
battalion charged with spirit, and " the artillery, if not 
well served, was bravely fought, every officer and more 
than two -thirds of the men being killed or wounded." 
The Second Regiment made three charges, until but two 
officers were left alive, and one of the two was wounded. 1 
With daring spirit the savages rushed on the artil- 
lery, and twice gained the camp, plundering the tents 
and scalping the dead and dying, but both times they 
were driven back. The loss of officers and comrades, 
however, demoralized the men, so that they huddled 
together and became targets for the savages, and neither 
threats nor entreaties could bring order out of the chaos. 
It was only when the troops had almost ceased firing 
in their demoralization that the gout- ridden St. Clair, 
cool and brave in disaster, ordered a retreat. Only the 
Indian madness for plunder left alive a single man to 
tell the tale of disaster. Such of the wounded as could 
travel at all were mounted on horses: the others, though 
few, charged their pieces, and with what fortitude they 
could muster awaited the barbarities in store for them. 



1 The regulars and levies lost of men and non-commissioned officers 
550 killed aud 200 wounded ; of officers, 31 killed and 24 wounded, 
out of 95. The militia had 29 officers and 290 men ; their loss was 
4 officers killed and 5 wounded, 38 men killed and 29 wounded, 
besides 14 camp men killed and 13 wounded. The Indians, led by 
Blue Jacket, numbered 1500, of whom but 30 were killed. 

357 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

The scattering discbarge of fire-arms told to the fugitives 
the agonizing stoiy of lives dearly sold. At half-past 
nine the retreat began, officers and men throwing away 
arms, ammunition, and accoutrements in their precipi- 
tate and ignominious flight; and at seven that evening 
the friendly gates of Fort Jefferson, twenty-nine miles 
from the battle-field, opened to the fugitives. But at 
five o'clock next morning the march was resumed, lest 
famine should complete the work left by the savages. 
On the 8th, the remnant of the army reached Cincin- 
nati. 1 

Three months after St. Clair's defeat, Colonel Sar- 
gent visited the scene of action. Although twenty 
inches of snow covered the ground, at every tread of 
his horse's feet dead and mangled bodies were brought 
to view ; every twig and bush was cut down by bullets, 
and the trees were riddled by Indian shot, while the fire 
of the troops, even of the artillery, appeared to have 
been ineffective. So far as possible, the mutilated bodies 
were suitably buried in the frozen ground ; and several 
tons of iron- work was recovered, but the artillery had 
disappeared. 

In all the story of "Washington's life there is no more 

1 See also "Causes of the Failure of the Expedition against the Ind- 
ians, in 1791, under the Command of General St. Clair," American State 
Papers, vol. i., Military Affairs, p. 63. Mr. Fitzsimons, as the result of 
the inquiry by a committee of the House of Representatives, reported 
the causes of failure to be : delays in furnishing material, misman- 
agement and neglect in the quartermaster's and contractor's depart- 
ments, lateness of the season, and want of discipline and experience 
of the troops. St. Clair was completely exonerated, "as his conduct 
in all the preparatory arrangements was marked with peculiar ability 
and zeal, so his conduct during the action furnished strong testimonies 
of his coolness and intrepidity." See also the report of Mr. Giles, 
Second Congress, second session. 

358 




ANTHONY WAYNE 



UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

human passage than that which relates how the news 
of disaster was brought to him one December day while 
he was at dinner; how the messenger would confide his 
despatches to none but the commander-in-chief; how 
the President got their purport, then quietly returned to 
the table and afterwards went through the appointed 
function for the evening ; and how, after all was over, 
Washington, in the presence only of Tobias Lear, his 
secretary, poured forth one of those torrents of rage 
and passion that on rare occasions passed over him as 
a squall lashes a mountain lake, leaving it placid and 
serene. There is reason to believe that on this occasion 
Washington swore ! But the end was the determination 
that St. Clair should not be prejudiced, but should have 
justice. 1 

Realizing from his own bitter experiences with militia 
at the outbreak of the French and Indian War, that the 
failures of Harmar and St. Clair were due quite as much 
to the insubordinate character of the troops as to the 
lack of capacity on the part of their commanders, Wash- 
ington now selected for general of the army a soldier of 
proverbial braver}?-, Mad Anthony Wayne, one of those 
rare men whom prudence teaches when to be rash suc- 
cessfully. The grandson of a Yorkshireman who had 
removed first to County Wicklow, in Ireland (where he 
fought gallantly at the battle of the Boyne), and then 
had come with the Scotch -Irish to settle in Chester 
County, Pennsylvania, young Anthony Wajme inher- 
ited also from his Indian-fighting father such a love of 
arms that the teachers of Philadelphia were unable to 
put their kind of learning into his head. He was ten 
years old the year Braddock was defeated, and fifteen 

1 Irving's Life of George Washington, vol. v., p. 103. 
359 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

when Montreal capitulated. The British army being 
closed to the son of a Pennsylvania frontier farmer, he 
chose the life nearest the soldier's — that of a surveyor. 
He was twenty years old when Benjamin Franklin and 
his associates selected him to lead a band of settlers to 
Xova Scotia, where for a year the enterprising post- 
master-general of the colonies hoped to make a fortune 
out of a great laud speculation. The troubles with 
England quickly stopped emigration, and Wayne re- 
turned to Pennsylvania to take a small but busy part 
in the conventions and assemblies that led up to the 
Eevolution. 

Entering the service as a colonel in the Pennsylvania 
line, Wayne and St. Clair were fellow -officers in the 
unsuccessful Canada expedition, and afterwards they 
became not altogether ungenerous rivals. At Brandy- 
wine, Germantown, Monmouth, and Stony Point, Wayne 
led his Pennsylvania troops with unsurpassed gallantry; 
and after Yorktown he won a major- general's commis- 
sion in Greene's campaign in Georgia, from which state 
he was sent to Congress with credentials that were not 
approved by the House of Eepresentatives. In April, 
179:?. at the end of "Wayne's unsuccessful contest for a 
seat in the House, Washington appointed this bankrupt 
Georgia planter and Pennsylvania farmer to command 
the army. Wayne's task was to retrieve the failure of 
St. Clair, his former rival, and to avenge the death of his 
campmate and friend. General Richard Butler, who after 
winning glory in the Eevolution died the death of a Bay- 
ard on St. Clair's bloody field. 1 The first necessity was 

1 There 'were three brothers Butler in this battle. Captain Edward 
Butler removed the woundeJ general from the field ; returning he 
found his other brother. Major Butler, shot through both legs, and 
carried him to the same tree under which the general was placed. 

860 



UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

to get into shape the enlarged array that Congress had 
authorized for the campaign, and had named the Legion 
of the United States. 

Arriving at Pittsburg in June, Wavne began the ar- 
duous task of recruiting and drilling men who were so 
terrified at the name of Indian that while yet in Penn- 
sylvania on one occasion the mere report of savages in 
the neighborhood caused one-third of the sentinels to 
desert their posts. So thorough was the drill that by 
St. Patrick's day the sons of that saint could manoeu- 
vre and shoot in a way to astonish the observant Ind- 
ians. In May, 1793, Wayne with his legion dropped 
down the Ohio from his camp near Fort Mcintosh to 
Fort Washington, and there kept up the daily drills 
while he grimly awaited the results of the council to be 
held with the Indians at the mouth of the Detroit. 

Desiring above all things to reach, if possible, a har- 
monious understanding with the Western Indians before 
resorting to hostilities, Washington, early in 1793, ap- 
pointed as commissioners General Benjamin Lincoln, of 
Massachusetts, who had been Secretary of War, and had 
suppressed Shay's rebellion in 1787; Beverly Randolph, 
of Virginia; and Colonel Timothy Pickering, then of 
Pennsylvania, the Postmaster- general, and shortly af- 
terwards the Secretary of War. After a private coun- 
cil with the British agents, Colonel Brant, 1 on behalf 
of the Confederated Indians, sent to the commission- 
ers an ultimatum stating that the southern boundary 
of the Indian lands must be the Ohio Biver ; and when 

When retreat became necessary General Butler said, "Edward, I am 
mortally wounded. Leave me to my fate and save my brother !" It 
is to be hoped that lie died before the comiDg of the Indians. See 
Stille's Life of Wayne, p. 870. 

1 Canadian Archives. Brant to Colonel McKee, May 17, 1793. 

361 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

the council met on July 31, in the little council-house at 
the mouth of the Detroit, this message was repeated in 
emphatic form. "We shall be persuaded that you mean 
to do us justice, if you agree that the Ohio shall be the 
boundary-line between us," said the message; "if you 
will not consent thereto our meeting will be altogether 
unnecessary." To this the commissioners made reply 
that it was impossible to fix the Ohio as the boundary, 
and that the negotiation was therefore at an end. 1 So 
the commissioners returned to report their failure ; and 
the chiefs of the Western Nations informed Simcoe that 
the Americans insisted on keeping the whole Indian 
country, and in payment offered money, which was use- 
less to them. " We expect," they said, 2 " to be forced 
again to defend ourselves and our country, and we look 
up to the great God, who is a witness of all that passes 
here, for His pity and His help." McKee, reporting 
the results of the council to Simcoe, professes that he 
did all he could to bring about a better result ; but that 
the Western Indians would not agree with the Six Na- 
tions, but insisted on the Ohio boundary. " The nations 
that have not sold," he says, " will enjoy without dis- 
pute the lands belonging to them ; these will form an 
extensive barrier between the British and American 
territory. Although I have used no influence to pre- 
vent a peace, which would have afforded me gratifica- 
tion, I expect to be blamed by the malevolent." 3 One 
need not necessarily be malevolent in assuming that a 
result so entirely satisfactory to his masters was brought 
about through the efforts of the wily Indian agent. 
Indeed, a contrary view would be an aspersion on Mo- 

1 Canadian ArcJiives, 1891, p. 54. 

2 Ibid., 1891, p. 55. 

3 Ibid., 1891, p. 55. 

362 




DKAWING-KOOM, WAYNE HOMESTEAD 



UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

Kee's undoubted abilities and influence over the savages 
whom he fed and clothed. 1 

It was September before Secretary Knox counter- 
manded the orders against an Indian campaign. "Every 
offer has been made to obtain peace by milder terms 
than the sword," wrote Knox ; " but the efforts have 
failed under circumstances that leave us nothing 1 to ex- 
pect but war." In short, the Indians had stipulated for 
the Ohio boundary-line, and that was an impossibility. 
On receipt of this letter Wayne replied from Camp 
Hobson's Choice: "I will advance to-morrow with the 
force I have." On October 13th the army encamped 
on a branch of the Miami eighty miles north of Cin- 
cinnati, a spot to which Wayne gave the name Green- 
ville, in honor of his commander and friend in the 
South Carolina campaign. There he passed the winter, 
sending forward a large detachment to build upon St. 
Clair's fatal field a post euphemistically called Fort 
Recovery. 

The Indians know a soldier. They quickly took the 
measure of Braddock and of Bouquet, of St. Clair and 
of Wayne. The way in which the Swiss colonel and 
the Pennsylvania general handled their men on the 
wilderness march showed to the savages that ambush 
was out of the question ; and that a battle or else sub- 
mission were the alternatives. While the administra- 
tion had no desire to get into difficulties with Great 
Britain, still Secretary Knox instructed Wayne that if 
in his operations against the Indians it should be found 
necessary to dislodge the British garrison in Governor 
Simcoe's fort at the rapids of the Miami, he was author- 

1 A brief reference to the council will be found in Charles "Weut- 
worth Upham's Life of Timothy Pickering (Boston, 1873), vol. iii., p. 
49 et seq. 

3G3 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

ized in the name of the President to do so. On the 30th 
of June, 179Jr, a force of riflemen were attacked sudden- 
ly under the guns of Fort Recovery ; but the savages, 
although they appeared in force, were beaten off. 

Making feints towards the Miami villages on the left 
and lloche de Bout on the right, Wayne's army, on 
August 8th, advanced to the Auglaize to find that by 
reason of the timely warning of Newman, a deserter, 
the Indians had precipitately abandoned their settle- 
ments and towns. Thus without loss Wayne gained 
possession of " the grand emporium of the hostile Ind- 
ians of the West," with its very extensive and highly 
cultivated fields and gardens, showing the work of many 
hands. The margins of those beautiful rivers, the Miami 
of the Lakes (Maumee) and the Auglaize, appeared like 
one continuous village for miles up and down the 
streams ; while for immensity the fields of corn were 
unrivalled from Canada to Florida. In the midst of 
this beautiful prospect, at the confluence of the two 
rivers, Wayne- set a strong stockade fort bastioned with 
four good block -houses, and called it Fort Defiance. 
Thence he sent to the Delawares, Shawanese, Miamis, 
and Wyandottes and their allies an offer of a lasting 
peace, which should restore them to their lands and vil- 
lages and preserve their helpless and distressed women 
and children from hunger and famine. This message 
he sent by Christopher Miller, an adopted Shawanese; 
and he warned the Indians that injury or delay to his 
messenger would be followed by the death of the pris- 
oners, some of whom were known "to belong to the 
first families of their nations." 

Wayne's offer met an evasive response. On August 
20th, the Indians, assembled near the British post on 
McKee's farm at the falls of the Miami, received the 

364 






UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

American arm)' - . Into Price's battalion of mounted 
volunteers the savages, secreted in the woods and the 
tall grass, poured a murderous fire. The tornado-swept 
ground was covered with fallen timber, which gave the 
Indians a great advantage; and the savages attempted 
to execute their favorite manoeuvre of turning the ene- 
my's Hank. Sending Major-general Scott to turn the 
Indian right, Wayne ordered his front line to advance 
and charge with trailed arms, to arouse the Indians 
from their coverts at the point of the bayonet, and when 
up, to deliver a close and well - directed fire on their 
backs, followed by a brisk charge, so as not to let them 
load again. So sharp was this attack and so precipitate 
the retreat of the savages that the detachments sent to 
turn the flanks of the Indians could not catch up with 
their comrades who took the straight road to the British 
post. 

During the three da}^ that he remained on the Mi- 
ami, Wayne treated the British garrison to huge bon- 
fires of standing corn, and of the houses and farm build- 
ings of the British Indian agent, Alexander McKee, " the 
principal stimulator of the war now existing between 
the United States and the savages," as Wayne justly 
characterized him. The British commandant Major 
William Campbell, as in duty bound, protested against 
Wayne taking post "almost within reach of the guns of 
this fort"; to which the American general replied that 
his " fullest and most satisfactory answer was announced 
to you from the muzzle of my small - arms yesterday 
morning in the action against the hordes of savages in 
the vicinity of your post, which terminated gloriously 
for the Americans; but had it continued until the Ind- 
ians, etc., were drove under the influence of the post 
and guns you mention, they would not much have im- 

365 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

peded the progress of the victorious army under my 
command ; as no such post was established at the com- 
mencement of the present war between the Indians and 
the United States." Major Campbell prudently fore- 
bore to resent the insults which Wayne offered to the 
British ilag by sending his light infantry 1 within pistol- 
shot of the fort. Then Wayne ordered the British com- 
mandant to withdraw from that post : and after destroy- 
ing everything even under the muzzle of his guns, the 
American army, its purpose accomplished, began its 
homeward march. On his way Wayne set the iron 
heel of war on the paradise of Grand Glaize, and that 
winter there was want and suffering in the Indian towns 
and depletion in the stocks of British provisions. 

After the battle of Fallen Timbers, General Wayne 
retired to Greenville, where the remnant of the Legion 
that was retained in service went into winter -quar- 
ters. There he was visited by various chiefs and 
warriors, to whom he explained that the United States, 
having conquered Great Britain, were entitled to the 
possession of the Lake Posts ; and that the new 
nation was anxious to make peace with the Indians, 
to protect them in the possession of abundant hunt- 
ing-grounds, and to compensate them for the lands 
needed by the white settlers. The Indians, on their 
part, had lost a number of their most warlike chiefs; 
they were deeply incensed at the action of the British, 
both in closing Fort Miamis to them at the time of their 
great defeat, and also in not coming to their aid with 
the soldiers from Detroit, as McKee and the other 
agents had promised ; and already the Shawanese were 

1 Daily Journal of Wayne's Cainpaign, by Lieutenant Boyer (Cin- 
cinnati, 1S66\ p. 9. 

366 



UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

planning to remove across the Mississippi. In the midst 
of these prolonged negotiations a copy of the Jay Treaty 
arrived, and when the Indians found that a definite date 
was fixed for the surrender of the posts, they no longer 
hesitated to draw a boundary line which surrendered the 
territory embraced in the land grants already made by 
Congress, together with other lands about the various 
posts as set forth in the treaty of Muskingum or Fort 
Harmar. On August 3, 1795, General Wayne was able 
to announce that he had concluded " a permanent 
peace " with the ten great nations dwelling within the 
Northwest; and nothing now remained but to await the 
day set for the delivery of the posts. 1 

While General Wayne was preparing for his campaign 
against the Indians, the Chief -justice of the United 
States appeared in London as a special envoy from 
President Washington to compose those differences that 
had brought the two countries to the verge of war. 
There were aggravations on both sides. England had 
been thrown from her balance by the French Revolution, 
which then was shaking every government in the 
civilized world. In the United States a numerous and 
noisy party espoused the cause of France ; and Minister 
Genet had even presumed to take an appeal from the 
conservative Washington to the excitable American peo- 
ple. In the end the dignity and individuality of this 
nation were preserved ; but it took time for the sober 
sense of the people to make itself felt. England, revolt- 
ing from the cruelties and horrors of Robespierre, had 
joined Austria, Russia, Spain, and Sardinia in a war with 
France ; and in her efforts to crush her rival had no 

1 The full proceedings of the Treaty of Greenville are given in Jacob 
Burnet's Notes on the Early Settlement of the Northwestern Territory 
(Cincinnati, 1847), chapters ix. to xii. 

367 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

scruples about seizing American ships trading to French 
ports. Moreover, eleven years had elapsed since the treaty 
of 1783, and still the posts were not surrendered ; and the 
states were aggravating matters by legislation to pre- 
vent the collection of debts owed to English merchants. 
Such was the inauspicious condition of affairs, when, on 
June 15, 1794, John Jay informed Lord Grenville of his 
coming to negotiate a treaty of friendship and commerce. 
Fortunately for both countries, the negotiators were 
men of more than the ordinary calibre, and as a conse- 
quence in their informal discussions they speedily came 
to terms that were mutually conciliatoiy. The British 
spoliations on American commerce ; the debts due to 
English creditors and for any reason not collectable in 
the courts, and the damages due England on account of 
depredations of French cruisers fitted out in the United 
States, were to be settled by commissions; the negroes 
carried away by the British in 1783 were not to be paid 
for; the Northwestern posts were to be surrendered on 
or before June 1, 1797, but there was to be free inter- 
course across the border, and free navigation of the 
Mississippi, the duties on goods to be uniform with those 
paid at the sea-coast ports of entry ; all ambiguities in 
the boundaries were to be removed by a commission of 
survey ; American vessels were to be allowed to trade, 
under restrictions, with the British West Indies ; and 
there were other provisions of decided advantage to this 
country. This treaty, although bitterly assailed at first, 
was ratified by the Senate ; and the House, on April 30, 
179G, agreed to the appropriation required to carry out 
its provisions, in spite of the opposition of Madison and 
Gallatin. 1 The Senate, however, provided for the sus- 

1 For a discussion of the treaty see Dr. James B. Angell's judicial 

368 




JOHN JAY 



UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

pension of the article relative to West Indian trade, and, 
pending the agreement of England to the amendment, 
the execution of the treaty was delayed. 

In the spring of 1796 a second New England colo- 
ny, led by Moses Cleveland, Augustus Porter, and Seth 
Pease, assembled at Schenectady, New York, to make 
a wilderness journey and to plant on the shores of Lake 
Erie the colony of New Connecticut. From the Con- 
necticut legislature of 1792 came grants of a half 
million acres of Fire Lands, to be located at the west 
end of the territory reserved in the cession of the 
state to compensate the sufferers from the British 
ravages on its coasts ; and in September, 1795, the 
state had sold to John Caldwell, Jonathan Brace, and 
John Morgan, as trustees for the Connecticut Land 
Company, three million acres of its reserve at forty 
cents per acre. Provided with quit-claim deeds, the 
Connecticut immigrants met, near Buffalo, Red Jacket 
and the principal chiefs of the Six Nations, and from 
them purchased the Indian rights of occupancy to the 
entire reserve for £500 worth of goods, to be paid to the 
Western Indians; two beef cattle, and one hundred gal- 
lons of whiske}^, together with the usual gifts and 
feasts. On the nation's anniversary the band of fifty 
home-makers came to Conneaut Creek ; there they cele- 
brated the day with a federal salute of fifteen rounds 
and a sixteenth for New Connecticut ; then they drank 

article on the "Diplomacy of the United States" in vol. vii. of the 
Narrative and Critical History of the United States; also William Jay's 
Life of John Jay (New York, 1833), vol. i., p. 322 el seq. President 
Angell is convinced that "looking back from our present point of 
view, we must admit that the completion of the negotiation was wise 
and fortunate." Henry Adams, in his Life of Albert Gallatin, says 
that Jay's treaty "thrust a sword into the body politic," and he re- 
gards the treaty as having forced the division of parties. See p. 159. 
2 a 369 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

"several pails of grog," and "supped and retired in 
good order." 

Beginning at once the surveys, General Cleveland's 
party coasted along the lake to the Cuyahoga, where, 
on July 22d, they began the city that bears the name 
of its founder; and by the } T ear 1800 there were thirty- 
two settlements on the Eeserve. 1 

No sooner had the ratifications of Jay's treaty been 
exchanged than, on May 27th, General AVilkinson, left in 
command of Wayne's army at Greenville, sent his aide- 
de-camp, Captain Schaumburg, to Colonel England at 
Detroit, to demand the surrender of the posts under his 
command. Colonel England regretted — so he said — 
that a lack of orders from Lord Dorchester would pre- 
vent him from complying with General Wilkinson's 
request ; and the condition of the new post at the mouth 
of the Detroit was not sufficiently advanced to enable 
him to name a date for evacuation. 2 This was the last 
ineffectual demand. 

In June, 1796, Captain Lewis, despatched from Phila- 
delphia on the day that the Senate took final action on 
the Jay treaty, presented to Lord Dorchester a demand 
for the surrender of the Northwest posts. Nothing 
could exceed the civility that was bestowed upon the 
representative of the War Department by Lord Dor- 
chester's family ; his lordship, then about seventy years 
old, made particular inquiries as to Washington's health, 
and "seemed pleased to learn that he was well and 
looked well." Captain Lewis could have dined out for 
a month at Quebec. At every gathering " the first 
toast was the King of Great Britain and the second 

1 Whittlesey's History of Cleveland. See also Garfield's Oration on 
the Northwest Territory, "Old South Leaflets," No. 42. 

2 Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, vol. xii., p. 220. 

370 



UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

invariably the President." The people, too, seemed 
pleased at the prospect of friendly intercourse with the 
Americans. ' 

On his way back to Philadelphia, Captain Lewis deliv- 
ered to Captain Bruff at Albany the orders for the evacu- 
ation of Niagara and Oswego. 2 He brought to Secretary 
McHenry the British commander-in-chiefs order ad- 
dressed to the officers commanding the guard left for 
the protection of the works and buildings at Forts Miami, 
Detroit, and Michilimackinac, 3 and commanding each to 
vacate his post " to such officer belonging to the forces of 
the United States as shall produce this authority to you 
for that purpose, who will precede the troops destined to 
garrison it by one clay, in order that he may have time 
to view the nature and condition of the works and 
buildings." Congratulating the President on "the event 
which adds a large tract of country and w T ide resources 
to the territory of the United States," the secretary im- 
mediately despatched a special messenger to put General 
Wa}me in possession of the precious documents. 

The orders for the surrender of Fort Miami and of 
Detroit were sent from General Wilkinson at Greenville 
to Lieutenant -colonel Hamtramck, at Camp Deposit; 
and the latter lost no time in putting them into execu- 
tion. Sending Captain Henry de Butts to Detroit to 
purchase a vessel, Hamtramck himself, on June 11th, 
"actually displayed the American stripes at Fort Miami, 

1 State Department MSS., McHenry to Washington, June 23, 1796. 

2 State Department MSS., McHenry to Washington, June 27, 1796. 
Niagara was surrendered August 11, 1796. See Canadian Archives, 
1891, p. 75. 

3 State Department MSS., Adjutant- general George Beckwith's 
letter of June 2, 1796. The Lake Champlain posts and Oswegatchie 
(Ogdensburg) had previously been given up without formality. See 
also Canadian Archives, Beckwith to McHenry, June 3, 1796. 

371 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

and embarked the same day with about four hundred 
men for Detroit." 1 

Captain Moses Porter, 2 despatched by Hamtramck 
with a detachment of artillery and infantry, comprising 
sixty-five men, embarked at the mouth of the Maumee 
in a schooner of fifty tons burden and in a dozen bat- 
eaux. Entering the Detroit River on the 11th of July, 
1796, they discovered first a few widely scattered houses 
set along the low-lying shores, but as they progressed 
they found clustered about the new British post some 
twenty houses, in all stages of completion. The region 
was known as the district of Maiden, but as yet the 
name of Amherstburg had not been given to the town, 
and for months it was known simply as " the new Brit- 
ish post and town near the island of Bois Blanc," an isl- 
and, by-the-way, that was claimed to be within the 
United States, greatly to the disturbance of Governor 
Simcoe. 3 The most considerable establishment in the 
place belonged to the Indian agent, Captain Elliott ; 
the lands, comprising two thousand acres, were culti- 
vated in a manner that would not have been " thought 
meanly of even in England"; the house, standing about 
two hundred yards from the river, commanded a full 
view of that noble stream and of Lake Erie. At the 
edge of the water stood the council -house, in which 
matters were discussed and decisions were reached the 
echoes of which were heard in the councils of nations 

1 American Telegraph, August 24, 1796. Letter of General James 
Wilkinson to the Secretary of War, dated Greenville, July 16, 1796. 

2 American Pioneer, vol. ii., p. 394. Hamtramck to Wilkinson. 

3 The ownership of the island was not settled until after the treaty 
of Ghent in 1817. After the War of 1812 the question was again 
raised. — War Department MSS. ; Protest of Colonel Anthony But- 
ler, July 1, 1815 ; and Andrew J. Dallas to Colonel Butler, May 31, 
1815. 

372 



UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

at New York and London. On Bois Blanc were en- 
camped hundreds of Indians, curious and intent specta- 
tors of the changes then in progress. Ahead, the broad 
water was dotted with the swift-darting Indian canoes, 
with here and there the pleasure-boat of some thrifty 
trader ; islands of all sizes and shapes, their shores lined 
with marshes, were strewn along the river; and the 
banks were without habitation save here and there lit- 
tle knots of miserable Indian huts. As the flotilla came 
within four miles of Detroit the houses became numer- 
ous ; there were smiling orchards of peach and cherry ; 
and tall trees of the pomme-caille, the favorite apple of 
the county. Sailing up to the great wooden wharf, 
the detachment disembarked, and marched up one of 
the narrow, unpaved streets, with its footway of squared 
logs laid transversely, thence through one of the two 
gates on the water side of the strong stockade, and 
through the town and up the slope to Fort Lernoult, 
with its bastioned corners from which the cannon had 
been removed to supply the new post at Maiden. As 
the troops passed up the street crowds of barefooted 
Frenchmen greeted them in a language they did not un- 
derstand, and bevies of dark-eyed French girls gazed de- 
murely from under the wide brims of their straw hats, 
anxious to discover whether the homespun - clad new- 
comers were fitted to take the place of the gorgeous- 
hued soldiers and sailors whom the fate of war had rel- 
egated to the mouth of the river. Nor were Indians 
wanting ; old squaws leading their daughters leered at 
the soldiers ; chiefs and warriors of many tribes, hid- 
eous in their paint and more hideous in the wounds re- 
ceived in drunken orgies, moved about with what dig- 
nity they could command, or sat in the sun smoking 
their stone pipes, waiting for General Wabang (General 

373 



\i 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

To-morrow) to distribute the presents he was ever prom- 
ising and never bestowing. 

At the hour of noon 1 the last of Colonel England's 
troops made their way to the ramparts, and, loosing 
the halyards, the flag that for thirty-four years had 
floated over the town of Cadillac's foundation dropped 
slowly to the ground. While the British soldiers gath- 
ered up the dishonored ensign, eager Americans bent 
the Stars and Stripes, and as the joyous folds of the 
beautiful banner streamed out on the July breeze a 
cheer went up from the little band of United States 
soldiers, whose feet at last trod the soil made theirs by 
the conquest of Clark, seventeen years before. Stand- 
ing among the indifferent crowd that watched the 
change of flags were many besides the Detroit -born 
Reynolds 2 who would live to see and to rejoice in the 
day, sixteen years distant, when the then despised flag 
of England would again for a few months wave over 
that town and people. Detroit was essential!} 7- a for- 
eign city, a small part English, the greater part French, 
but not in any degree or sense American. 

1 Columbian Sentinel, Boston, August 24, 1796 ; extract from a let- 
ter of Captain Henry de Butts to the Secretary of War, dated Detroit, 
July 14th: "It is with great pleasure I do myself the honor of announc- 
ing to you that on the 11th instant, ahout noon, the flag of the United 
States was displayed on the ramparts of Detroit, a few minutes after 
the works were evacuated by Colonel England and the British troops 
under his command, and with additional satisfaction I inform you that 
the exchange was effected with much propriety and harmony by both 
parties." 

2 1812; The War and Its Moral, by William CofBn (Montreal, 1864), 
p. 196. Reynolds was born in Detroit, in 1781; his father was the 
British commissary. To Coffin, who visited him at his home in Mai- 
den in 1863, he said : "I saw the British flag hauled down from the 
flag-staff of Detroit at noon, 11th July, 1796. 1 saw it again hoisted 
by Brock, at noon of Sunday, 16th August, 1812." 

374 



UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

On July 25th the twenty-ton American sloop Detroit, 
Captain Curry, arrived at Presque Isle for provisions 
and stores, and returned to Detroit for the garrison 
intended for Michilimackinac. 1 On the 16th of that 
month, fifty-eight of the merchants, traders, and inhabi- 
tants of the post had united in an address to the retir- 
ing British commandant, Major William Doyle, com- 
mending him for the impartial manner in which he had 
supported and protected the trade of that place, and for 
the " invariable propriety " with which he had acted 
as magistrate. Before taking passage for the lower 
lakes, he had replied, on July 26th, acknowledging for 
himself and his officers the uniform support they had 
always experienced from the signers of the address, and 
wishing every prosperity to the Canadian fur -trade. 2 
The actual evacuation of the post took place early in 
August, and before the first of September the strange 
flag of the United States was snapping in the brisk 
breezes at the meeting-place of lakes Huron and Michi- 
gan. 3 

On the evening of August 10th, the Americans ap- 
peared at Fort Niagara, where they were politely and 
attentively received by the British Captain Sheafe, who 
turned over the fort, and possession was formally taken 
by mounting a sergeant's guard. Next morning the ar- 
tillery, stores, and the remainder of the garrison disem- 
barked; at three o'clock in the afternoon of the 11th the 



1 Massachusetts Spy, August 24, 1796. 

2 Quebec Gazette, August 25, 1796. A similar address, dated July 
6th, was made to Colonel England by the people of Detroit, and was 
replied to by him. 

3 Albany Gazette, September 30, 1796 : "A letter from Detroit, of 
August 15th, says that Michilimackinac is evacuated by the British, 
and will in the coming two weeks be occupied by our troops." 

375 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

Stars and Stripes were rim up under Federal salute, and 
the Fnited States came into possession of the last of the 
frontier posts. 1 

Colonel John Francis Ilamtramck, with his command, 
arrived at Detroit on the 13th of July, and immediate- 
ly began to mount his artillery in the places made va- 
cant by the removal of the British cannon, and in all 
possible ways to Americanize an old French town filled 
with British traders. Born in Canada, Ilamtramck was 
one of some seven hundred American sympathizers who 
crossed the border to join the Bevolutionary forces. En- 
tering the army at the age of twenty-one, he won a cap- 
taincy during the war ; on the organization of the First 
Regiment of Infantry he was appointed a lieutenant- 
colonel by Washington in 1790, and as colonel he was with 
both St. Clair and Wayne in their Indian campaigns, 
having command of the left wing of the army at the 
decisive battle of Fallen Timbers. At Detroit he en- 
tered at once into the spirit of the situation, and be- 
came popular both with his command and with the 
towns-people. With his wife he occupied a comfortable 
house in the town, and until his death in 1S03, at the 
early age of forty-eight years, he enjoyed a popularity 
that has kept his memory green to this day. 3 



1 Albany Gazette, September 9, 1796. 

' : The birthplace of Ilamtramck is unknown. He was born August 
14, 1754, and died April 11, 1803, leaving an estate valued at $3138.47, 
which descended to his widow Rebecca Hamtramck. His home was 
above the old city of Detroit, iu the suburb afterwards known as 
Hamtramck. His body was buried in St. Anne's Cemetery, then 
occupying the block on Jefferson Avenue bounded by Jefferson Ave- 
nue, Larned, Shelby, and Griswold streets, whence it was removed 
in 1817 to the new St. Anne's grounds on Congress Street, and in 
1S66 was removed a second time to Mount Elliott Cemetery. With 
more of truth than is commonly found in such a connection, the 

376 



UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

In the wake of the army of occupation came General 
Wayne himself. After enjoying at his home- city of 
Philadelphia the honors and triumphs of his victory ; 
after having experienced the gratification of being 
mentioned in eulogistic terms in President Washing- 
ton's special message to Congress ; and after incur- 
ring the persistent hostility of the anti - Federalists 
and the secret enmity of General Wilkinson, General 
Wayne was despatched to the frontier with the com- 
bined powers of a civil commissioner and a military 
commander. On August 13th he reached Detroit, to find 
that before his coming and without orders from Con- 
gress, the secretary of the Northwest Territory, Win- 
throp Sargent, had visited Detroit and erected the coun- 
ty of Wayne. Availing himself of the absence from 
the territory of Governor St. Clair, Sargent, as acting 
governor, had started for the North, and on August 
15th had drawn the boundaries of Wayne County, from 
the present site of Cleveland, south to Fort Laurens, 
thence westward through Fort Wayne and the Chicago 
portage, thence north through the sources of the streams 

stone erected by the officers of his command bears record that, " true 
patriotism and a zealous attachment to rational liberty, joined to a 
laudable ambition, led him into military service at an early period of 
his life. He was a soldier before he was a man; he was an active 
participator in all the dangers, difficulties, and honors of the Revolu- 
tionary War; and his heroism and uniform good conduct procured 
him the attentions and personal thanks of the immortal Washington. 
The United States in him has lost a valuable officer and a good 
citizen, and society a useful and pleasant member: to his family the 
loss is incalculable ; and his friends will never forget the memory 
of Hamtramck." — SeeMichigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, vol. 
xiii., p. 493; and an address, on the occasion of marking the grave of 
Colonel John Francis Hamtramck, at Mount Elliott Cemetery, Detroit, 
Michigan, by the Sons of the American Revolution, October 18, Wj7, 
delivered by Mr. R. Storrs Willis. 

377 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

flowing westerly into Lake Michigan, to the national 
boundary-line north of Lake Superior. Making Peter 
Audrain prothonotary at Detroit, Sargent continued his 
way to Michilimackinac, Avhere he established the civil 
authority of the government. Of these acts the cha- 
grined St. Clair learned most casually, but he contented 
himself by merely intimating surprise that he had been 
forestalled in making the journey to the northern limits 
of his government. 1 

After a fatiguing, difficult, and dangerous journey of 
twelve hundred miles, over mountains, rivers, swamps, 
and lakes, General "Wayne was flattered by his recep- 
tion on the part of both the garrison and the inhabi- 
tants of Detroit. On his approach he was met by the 
chiefs and warriors of numerous tribes of Indians, who 
welcomed their "father" by repeated volleys of mus- 
ketry, ear-piercing yells, friendly shakes of the hand, 
and other demonstrations of joy, " agreeably to the 
customs and usages of those hardy sons of this wilder- 
ness." When he entered the stockaded town the guns 
boomed a federal salute, and music attended his prog- 
ress to the fort. 

As Hennepin the Frenchman and Hamilton the Eng- 
lishman gave expression to their appreciation of the 
beauty of Detroit's situation, so this first American com- 
mander found much to admire in a town that had "for- 
merly filled an interesting place in history." " Here, in 
the centre of the wilderness of the West," he writes, 
" you see ships or large vessels of war and merchantmen 
lying at the wharves or sailing up and down a pleasant 
river of about one mile wide, as if passing and repassing 



1 St. Clair Papers. St. Clair to James Ross, September 6, 1796 ; St. 
Clair to Roger Wolcott, August 30, 1796. 

378 



UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

to and from the ocean. The town itself is a crowded 
mass of frame or wooden buildings, generally from one 
to two and a half stories high, many of them well fin- 
ished and furnished, and inhabited by people of almost 
all nations. There are a number of wealthy and well- 
informed merchants and gentlemen, and elegant, fash- 
ionable, and well-bred women. 

" The streets are so narrow as scarcely to admit two 
carriages to pass each other. The whole place is sur- 
rounded with high pickets, with bastions at proper 
distances, which are endowed with artillery ; within 
the pickets is also a kind of citadel, which serves for 
barracks, stores, and for part of the troops. You enter 
the town by one main street, which runs parallel with 
the river and has a gate at each end, defended by a 
block-house ; these gates are shut every night at sunset, 
and are not opened again until sunrise, in order to pro- 
tect the citizens and their property from insult or in- 
jury by drunken, disorderly, or hostile Indians. At 
particular seasons large bodies of Indians assemble at 
this place. Upon my arrival I found about twelve hun- 
dred, whom we have been obliged to feed from princi- 
ples of humanity as well as policy at this crisis. In the 
daytime these Indians appear to be perfectly domesti- 
cated, and pass and repass along the streets in common 
with the white inhabitants, but regularly retire at re- 
treat-beating without aversion, from long habit. It is 
probable that this precaution of clearing the town of the 
savages and closing the gates originated from the at- 
tempt made by the Indians to destroy the garrison and 
place in the year 1703, under the conduct of the famous 
chief Pontiac. 

" The fort, which has been built since, stands upon 
an eminence in the rear of the town and citadel, and 

379 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

commands both, as well as all the country in its vi- 
cinity. It's a regular earthen work, consisting of four 
half-bastions, with twenty -four platforms and embrasures 
suited to heavy artillery, with barracks, bomb - proofs, 
stores, etc., surrounded by a wide, deep ditch, with pick- 
ets set perpendicular in the bottom, and a fraise pro- 
jecting from the beam of the parapet over the ditch. 
The whole is encompassed by an abatis, but now 
generally in a state of ruin, from the effect of time 
only, and not from any wanton destruction ; on the 
contrary, every precaution was used to prevent any 
injury or damage to the works or buildings. In fact, 
all the works and buildings on the American side of 
the line of demarcation have been surrendered up by 
the several British commandants to the troops of the 
United States, agreeable to treaty, and in the most de- 
cent, polite, and accommodating manner, in virtue of the 
arrangements previously made with Lord Dorchester. 

" This event must afford the highest pleasure and 
satisfaction to every friend of government and good 
order, and in particular to that great and first of men, 
the President of the United States, and I trust it will 
produce a conviction to the world that the measures 
he has uniformly pursued to attain this desirable end 
were founded in wisdom, and that the best interests 
of his country have been secured by that unshaken 
firmness, patriotism, and virtue for which he is univer- 
sally and justly admired and celebrated ; a few Demon- 
crats excepted." l 

Pennsylvania Historical Society's collections of Wayne MSS. ; 
General Anthony Wayne to Isaac Wayne ; Detroit, September 10, 
1796. I am indebted to Mr. John W. Jordan, the secretary of the so- 
ciety, for furnishing me a copy of what is believed to be the only ex- 
tant communication written by Wayne while at Detroit. 

380 




GENERAL WAYNE'S GRAVE 



UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

General Wayne remained at Detroit until November 
17th, when he set sail for Presque Isle, on his homeward 
way. Tossed on the fitful billows of that shallow lake, 
Wayne's gout returned in violent form, and it was with 
difficulty that he was transferred to the block-house. 
There he remained under the devoted ministrations of 
Captain Russell Bissell and Dr. George Balfour until, 
on December i5th, death released his indomitable spirit 
from the racked body. A log block-house, copied from 
the one Wayne himself had built there in 1790, marks 
the spot where the brave soldier was laid at rest ; his 
remains, however, were removed in 1809 to the church- 
yard of St. David's, at Radnor, Pennsylvania. 1 

The surrender of the posts by no means involved the 
surrender of the fur-trade. Oswego had been founded 
by Sir William Johnson for the purpose of drawing the 
trade away from the French on the St. Lawrence; and 
the New York traders had continued to enjoy this 
market in spite of the British garrison ; but at best the 
traffic was meagre. At Niagara the trade was of con- 
siderable volume ; but Newark, the town in which the 
traders lived, was on the Canadian side of the river ; and 
when news came that the post was to be surrendered 
the few merchants within the fort limits crossed the 
line, leaving for the time being an empty fortress. 
Mackinac was indeed an important station of the North- 
west Company of Montreal, and several independent 
traders were there ; but on the surrender of Sinclair's 
fort the British established themselves near by, on the 
Island of St. Joseph, in the highway between lakes 
Huron and Superior; and although a number of Ameri- 
can traders came to take the vacant places, the intelli- 



1 Stille's Life of Wayne, p. 344. 
381 



the/ northwest under three flags 

gence, the trade connections, and the capital of an Astor 
•were necessary before competition with the Montreal 
merchants could become effective. 1 Of all the posts 
given up, Detroit was the most important. At the time 
of the surrender the town contained upward of twelve 
hundred people; but many of the traders removed to 
the new British post at the mouth of the river, and many 
of those who remained hesitated to become American 
citizens. Indeed, the Jay treaty made it of no advan- 
tage to change one's nationality. The departure of the 
traders and garrison gave house-room to the United 
States officers, not a few of whom appropriated to their 
own use houses and stores that had been built on lands 
granted illegally by the various post-commanders ; and 
the Americans even went so far as to compel the sub- 
jects of Great Britain to serve in the militia, a burden 
that caused them to appeal to the British minister. 3 

Tradition has it that on the appearance of the Ameri- 
cans at Detroit, Simon Girty, in his haste to escape from 
possible vengeance, swam his horse across the river, and 
galloped to his farm near the mouth of that stream. 
As an employe of the British Indian department he con- 
tinued to urge the savages to withstand the encroach- 



1 The romantic side of the American fur-trade at Mackinac has been 
related in Constance Fenimore Woolson's novel, Anne ; while the 
charm and witchery of the Lake region finds its subtlest expression in 
Miss Woolson's Castle Nowhere : Lake-country Sketches. 

2 Travels through the States of North America, and the Provinces 
of Upper and Lower Canada, during the years 1795. 179(5, 1797 ; by 
Isaac Weld, Jr. Fourth edition (London, 1S07), vol. ii., letters xxxii. 
and xxxiii. These letters contain the acute observations of an Eng- 
lishman who, with all his prejudices, saw matters in a truer light 
lhau did Judge Jacob Burnett, whose often-quoted description of De- 
troit at this time is as near the truth as a clever caricature is like 
the original. 

382 



UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

merits of the Americans on the territory north of the 
Ohio; in January, 1791, he led the Indians in their 
attack on Dunlap's Station, on the Great Miami ; and 
he was a participant in the frightful tortures inflicted 
by the Indians on Abner Hunt, by way of revenge for 
their ill success. At St. Clair's defeat Girty led the 
Wyandottes, looking on at the scalping of General But- 
ler, and sharing in the booty and prisoners. It is said 
that he saved the life of William May, a soldier who 
bore a Hag of truce to the Indians, and that May after- 
wards became a vessel-captain in the service of McKee 
and Elliott. In June, 1794, Girty aided Mclvee in plan- 
ning the unsuccessful Indian attack on Fort Recovery; 
and on August 20th the three renegades — Girty, McKee, 
and Elliott — watched from a safe distance Wayne's 
crushing defeat of the savages at Fallen Timbers. For 
the time being the Indians were whipped into submis- 
sion ; and it was all in vain that the British agents fed 
and clothed the homeless savages, and loaded the chiefs 
with presents. The utmost that they and Captain Brant 
could do was to prevent several tribes from joining in 
the treaty of Greenville ; but in so doing they covered 
the embers for future use. Girty himself continued to 
be employed as the king's interpreter; he had family 
troubles caused by his drunkenness; he lived through 
the War of 1S12, but by reason of blindness he could 
take no part in the struggles that went on about him ; 
and on February 18, ISIS, he died in the arms of his 
forgiving wife, and was buried on his farm in Maiden. 1 
The British retained command of the Grand Portage 
of Lake Superior, and of the Ottawa River route to and 
from the upper country; their new fort at Maiden and 



1 Butterfield's History of the Girti/s, p. 322. 
383 



I 



THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS 

the block-house on Bois Blanc Island commanded the 
channels of the Detroit River, as General Hull was to 
discover to his cost; and the British fort at Niagara 
was built so as to toss shot down into the American 
fortress. All these points were to prove of decided 
advantage to the British when the aggravations that 
never were wanting finally provoked the War of 1S12. 
During the twenty-two momentous years that elapsed 
between Lord Dunmore's war in 1774 and the surren- 
der of the Northwest posts in 1796, the Revolution had 
been fought through eight trying years; the North- 
west had been conquered by George Rogers Clark, and 
through the efforts of Jay and Franklin and Adams 
had been made the first addition to the territories of 
the new nation of the United States ; the land claims of 
the states had been surrendered to the federal govern- 
ment, and the new territory had been dedicated to free- 
dom, with large provisions for education ; the Ohio had 
become a highway of traffic and of immigration ; on 
the Muskingum and on Lake Erie New England colo- 
nies had been planted under such conditions and with 
such strength as to make New England ideas the domi- 
nant force throughout Ohio even to this day ; after two 
disastrous failures the Indians had been conquered 
though not subdued ; and the forces of England had 
been removed across the boundary-line. It was per- 
haps natural that there should be a reaction after such 
rapid expansion. England, made sullen and vindictive 
by the rapid growth of the United States, by pres- 
ents and subsidies kept a hold over the savages of the 
Northwest ; and the tremendous power of that rich 
and proud nation was felt particularly along the fron- 
tier, where the poverty and the meagre resources of the 
new nation were most apparent. When in 1812 Eng- 

384 



UNITED STATES WIN NORTHWEST POSTS 

land and America for a second time grappled with each 
other in war, the northwestern frontier from Niagara 
to Mackinac was called to receive the first shock of 
combat, and to experience the horrors of savage war- 
fare to an extent unparalleled during the Revolution. 
Far-off Kentucky was made to " Remember the River 
Raisin"; and the ignominious surrender of Detroit and 
the massacre at Mackinac were to be atoned for by 
Perry's victory of Lake Erie and Harrison's triumph on 
the Thames. 



INDEX 



Abbott, Edward, Lieutenant- govern- 
or, at Vinccnnes, 211. 

Abercrombie, Defeat of, 100, 245. 

Adams, Dr. Herbert B., 317. 

Adams, Henry, 310, 30'.). 

Adams, John, elected peace commis- 
sioner, 281, 2S3, 2S4, 3S4. 

Aix-la-Chapclle, Treaty of, 74, 75, 154. 

Albany convention of June, 1754, 90. 

Alexandria, Braddock's army at, 95, 
115. 

Algonquin Indians, 3, 7, 15. 

Allen, Ethan, 245. 

Allouez, Claude, 21. 

Amherst, General Jeffrey (Baron Am- 
herst), 100, 10G, 181, 147, 148, 149, 
152. 

Amherstburg, 372. 

Andrain, Peter, 37S. 

Angell, Dr. James B. ( 368. 

Arkansas River, Discovery of, 26. 

Armstrong, John, 33. 

Army of the United States, Size of, in 
1787, 344. 

Asatanik coes overland to Hudson 
Bay, 12." 

Ashland, Wisconsin, 21. 

Astor, John Jacob, 295, 3S2. 

Aubrv, Spanish commandant at New 
Orleans, 172. 

Avcneau, Father, 47. 

Baby, M., warns Gladwin of Indian 

treachery, 130. 
Baltimore and Chesapeake Canal, 811. 
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 311. 
Bancroft, George, 24, 25. 
Barlow, Joel, 343. 
Barre, Colonel Isaac, opposes Quebec 

Bill, 201. 



Barthe, Pierre, 132. 

Baton Rouge, 258. 

Bay des PuantS. (See Green Bay.) 

Beaubien, Charles, 209. 

Beaubien family, Origin of, 122. 

Beaujeu commands French at Brad- 
dock's defeat, 96. 

Beauvais, the richest man in Illinois 
country, 170. 

Beaver, Pennsylvania, 157. 

Beckwith, Major George, British spy, 
Reports of, in regard to the United 
States, 307, SOS. 

Bedford, Pennsylvania, 129. 

Belestre (or Bel'ctre), 102, 103. 

Belle Prairie, 352. 

Benton, Thomas II., 189. 

Bienville. (See Celeron.) 

"Big Knives," 219. 

Billon, F. L., 256. 

Bird, Lieutenant Henry, plans fort at 
Detroit, 250 ; expeditions of, 250, 
252. 

Birney, Thomas, 77. 

Black Hawk War, 40. 

Blair, Francis P., 76. 

Blair, Montgomery, 76. 

nine Licks, Slaughter at, 275. 

Bogy, Colonel L. V., 1 73. 

Bois Blanc Island, 31, 59, S48, 372, 
3S4. 

Bolivar, 251. 

Bolton, Colonel, 228. 

Bonne, Louis de, 61. 

Boone, Daniel, 185, 193; at Detroit, 
209. 

Boone, Squire, 185. 

Bosseron, 208. 

Boston, Troubles at, 186, 280; evac- 
uation of, 331. 



387 



INDEX 



Botetourt, Lord, 186. 

Boundaries in treaty of 1783, 282-9. 

Bouquet, Colonel Henry, arrives in 
America, 100; at Fort Pitt, 106, 
131 ; invited to join Ohio Company, 
146 ; attempts to remove settlers, 
149; his proclamation, 14*7, 148, 
151 ; thinks Ohio project a bubble, 
150; proposes separate colony on 
the Ohio, 14V, 161 ; his victory at 
Bushy Run, 152; early life of, 154, 
155; his acquaintance with Miss 
Willing, 155; his expedition to the 
Muskingum, 156-165; his promo- 
tion and death, 162, 183, 247, 337, 
363. 

Bouquet expedition, Accounts of, 155, 
245. 

Bouquet Papers, 276. 

Bowman, Major John, 219, 220, 234, 
251. 

Brace, Jonathan, 369. 

Braddock, General Edward, appears 
on the Potomac, 92 ; summons the 
royal governors to meet him at Alex- 
andria — his character and train- 
ing, 93 ; his boast, 94 ; defeat and 
death of, 97, 115, 167, 290, 363. 

Braddock's road, Dispute between 
Washington and Bouquet as to, 
101, 150. 

Bradstreet, Colonel John, makes peace 
with Lake Indians — the peace re- 
pudiated, 139; reaches Detroit, 139, 
156. 

Brady, Thomas, 25S. 

Brandy, Indian demand for, 44 ; price 
of, at Detroit, 53. 

Brant, Joseph, 262, 275; forms con- 
spiracy against Americans, 299 ; a 
social lion in England, 300 ; holds 
council at Detroit — his ultimatum, 
301 ; his Indian policy acceptable 
to England, 303, 306, 345, 348, 351, 
352, 361, 383. 

Brebceuf, Jean de, 4. 

Brodhead, Colonel Daniel, 242, 264, 
267. 

Brown, B. Gratz, 76. 

Bruff, Captain, receives surrender of 
Niagara and Oswego, 371. 

Brule, Etienne, his wanderings, 2. 

Brymer, Douglas, 297. 



Buffalo, New York, 369. 

Bullitt, Thomas, 184. 

" Bunch of Grapes " tavern, The, 333, 
334. 

Burgoyne's defeat, 226, 2S1. 

Burke, Edmund, 64, 70, 141 ; opposes 
Quebec Bill — fixes boundaries of 
New York, 202, 2S3, 300, 318. 

Burke, William, argues for retention 
of Guadaloupe instead of Canada, 
141. 

Burnett, Judge Jacob, 231, 382. 

Burton, Clarence M., his Cadillac pa- 
pers, 50, 112. 

Bushy Run, Battle at, 152, 154. 

Butler, Captain Edward, 360. 

Butler, General Richard, 299, 360. 

Butler, Indian trader, 188. 

Butler's Rangers, 262. 

Butterfield, Consul Willshire, 6 ; as to 
Crawford expedition, 269. 

Cabots, Voyages of the, 63. 

Cadillac, Antoine de Lamothe, 40 ; 
character of, 41 ; puts Iroquois 
messengers to death, 42 ; plans for 
a settlement on the Detroit, 43 ; 
opposition of the Jesuits, 44 ; per- 
suades Count Pontchartrain to grant 
concessions at Detroit, 44; founds 
Detroit, 46; objects to enforcing 
liquor regulations, 50 ; his early 
life, 50; his marriage, 50; children 
of, 51 ; prosperity of his enterprise, 
52 ; excessive charges for land, 52 ; 
obtains trading privileges, 55 ; his 
appearance, 55 ; ordered to Louisi- 
ana, 55, 374. 

Cadillac, Madame, joins her husband 
at Detroit, 49, 55. 

Cahokia, 169, 215, 220, 257, 258, 261. 

Caldwell, John, secures religious toler- 
ation in Virginia, 72, 369. 

Caldwell, Lieutenant, 211. 

Calhoun, John Caldwell, 72. 

Callieres, Governor of New Fiance, 
43. 

Calve, a French trader, 256. 

Camp Hobson's Choice, 363. 

Campbell, Captain Donald, comman- 
dant at Detroit, 107 ; detained by 
Pontiac, 122 ; murder of, 131. 

Campbell, Henry Colin, 11, 13, 16. 



8S8 



INDEX 



Campbell, Major William, British 
commander at Fort Miami, 365. 

Canada, Character of settlers in, 196; 
justice in, 197 ; loyalty to the crown, 
198; population of, 203; invited 
to join the American colonies in 
the Revolution, 205 ; cession, of pro- 
posed, 288 ; friendly feeling in, 
towards the United States, 371. 

Canadian Pacific Railway, 29. 

Carheil, Father Stephen de, refuses to 
leave Michilimackinac, 47; oa the 
liquor question, 48. 

Carleton, Sir Guy, succeeds Murray as 
Governor at Quebec, 196 ; revives 
old laws of Canada, 197; approves 
Quebec Bill, 199 ; testimony of, be- 
fore House of Commons, 202 ; re- 
called, 215, 222, 228, 247, 254, 295. 
(See also Lord Dorchester.) 

Carlisle, Fred., 132. 

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 129. 

Carlyle, Colonel John, his opinion of 
Croghan, 167. 

Carrington, Edward, 326. 

Carroll, Charles, 205. 

Carroll, Rev. John, 205. 

Carteret, Sir George, 13. 

Cartier, Jacques, explores the St. 
Lawrence, 2, 63. 

Carver, Jonathan, his story of the Pon- 
tiac conspiracy, 113; his travels 
through North America, 113, 320. 

Cass, General Lewis, 18, 45 ; secures 
documents relating to the North- 
west, 49, 113. 

Casse family, 59. 

Castel Sarrasin, 55, 223. 

Catharine II. of Russia, 282. 

Cathay, 5, 294. 

Catherwood, Mary Ilartwell, 129. 

Cavendish, Sir Henry, reports debates 
on Quebec Bill, 144. 

Cealle, Carrigan de, 60. 

Celeron de Bienville takes possession 
of the Ohio country, 74; ordered to 
drive the English from the North- 
west, 82, 83. 

Chacornacle, Cadillac's lieutenant, 45. 

Champigny, Intendantof New France, 
43. 

Champlain, 2, 5. 

Chaney, Henry A., 330. 



Channing, Professor Edward, 321. 

Chapoton, Jean Baptiste, 200. 

Chapoton family, 59. 

Chase, Samuel, 205. 

Chatham, Earl of, opposes Quebec 
Act, 109; opposes American inde- 
pendence, 279. (See also Pitt, 
William.) 

Chequamegon Bay, 20, 22. 

Cherokees, 177, 181, 188, 216. 

Cherubin, Father, 56. 

Chevalier, Louis, 257, 259, 261. 

Chickasaws, 166, 241. 

Chillicothe, 251. 

Chippewas capture Michilimcckinac, 
122, 128, 158, 210, 270. 

Choctaw Indians, 241. 

Choiseul encourages colonies to revolt, 
2S0. 

Chouart, Medard, comes to Ne wFrance, 
9. (See also Radisson and Giosseil- 
liers.) 

Chouteau, Auguste, a founder of St. 
Louis, 169, 173, 256. 

Christinos Indians, 21, 23. 

Christmas celebrated in the Ohio 
country, 77. 

Cincinnati, 34S, 355, 363. 

Clapham, John, Murder of, 107. 

Clara d'Assisi, Saint, 32. 

Clark, George Rogers, with Cresap at 
Wheeling, 191 ; in Dunmore war, 
193; early life of, 216; plans con- 
quest of the Northwest, 217 ; sends 
spies to Illinois country, 218; capt- 
ures Kaskaskia, 219; capture of 
Vincennes, 232 - 237 ; plans to 
march on Detroit, 238 ; Pickaway 
raid, 253, 261 ; leads force to Vin- 
cennes, 308; his bad habits, 308, 
316, 322, 338, 374, 3S4. 

Clay, Henry, 37. 

Clergue, F. H., 294. 

Cleveland, Moses, 369. 

Cleveland, Ohio, 167; founded, 370. 

Clinch River, 185. 

Clinton, Governor George, 296, 309. 

Coal in the Ohio country, 92. 

Coffin, William, 374. 

Colonies, Jealousies among, 142. 

Company of the Colony, 46, 51, 53. 

Conde, Prince, 30. 

Congress, recommends that Virginia 



389 



INDEX 



close lier land office, 31V; declara- 
tion of, as to new States in Western 
territory, SIS ; provides for sale of 
ceded lands, 318; asks Virginia to 
make more favorable offer of ces- 
sion, 320. 

Connecticut, 8 ; boundaries of, 6G ; 
offers to cede her Western lands, 
318; sells reserved lands, 321; 
gains by her cession, 321. 

Connecticut Land Company, 369. 

Connecticut Reserve, 321, 322. 

Conolly, Dr. John, in command at Fort 
Pitt, 186; calls on settlers to repel 
Shawanese raids, 188, 195, 212, 338. 

Contrecceur captures fort at forks of 
the Ohio, 89. 

Coolev, Thomas M., 327. 

Copper, 2, 22, 25, 47. 

Corn-planter, 299. 

Cornstalk, Shawanese chief, at the 
battle of Point Pleasant, 190; as- 
sents to Dunmore peace, 192. 

Cornwallis, Lord, Surrender of, 279. 

Coureurs de bois, 24. 

Craigie house, 343. 

Cramahe, Lieutenant-governor, at 
Quebec, 197. 

Crawford, Colonel William, with 
Washington on the Ohio, 1S4; 
friend of Washington, 270 ; defeat 
of, 272; torture of, 274. 

Gresap, Captain Michael, 188; early 
life of, 1S9 ; joins Washington at 
Cambridge, 193; his death, 193. 

Crcsap, Colonel Thomas, 72, 76, 145, 
146, 147, 150, 153; sketch of, 188. 

Croghan, George, 76, 106, 151; his 
journey to Illinois country, 162; his 
journals, 163; sketch of, 167, 168, 
172, ISO; with Washington, 1S4. 

Cromwell, 6S. 

Crown Point, 91. 

Cuillerier, the family, 60, 122, 126; 
M. Cuillerier, French trader at De- 
troit, 122, 126; Mademoiselle Cuil- 
lerier, 108, 112. 

Culpeper grant, 69. 

Cumberland River, 185. 

Curran, Barnaby, 76, 85. 

Custom of Paris, 324. 

Cutler, Rev. Manasseh, proposes to 
buy Western lands, 329, 330, 332 ; 



secures passage of Ordinance of 

1787, 333, 342, 344. 
Cuttawa River. (See Kentucky River.) 
Cuyler, Lieutenant, 127. 

D'Abbadie, French Governor at New 
Orleans, 172. 

Dablon, Claude, 22, 24. 

D'Aigrement, Report of, as to Detroit, 
48, 52. 

Dalyell, Captain, reinforces Detroit, 
132; killed at Bloody Run, 133. 

Dane, Nathan, 326 ; proposes amend- 
ment excluding slavery from North- 
west, 327 ; his work on Ordinance 
of 1787,328. 

D'Aranda's opinion of treaty of 1783, 
290. 

Dartmouth, Lord, 198 ; prepares Que- 
bec bill, 199, 205; succeeds Hills- 
borough, 183. 

Daumont, Simon Francois. (See Saint 
Lusson.) 

Davers, Sir Robert, 110, 119. 

Davis, Andrew McFarland, 276. 

Deane, Silas, suggests sale of North- 
west lands, 315. 

De Butts, Captain Henry, 371. 

Dejean, Philip, judge at Detroit, 229, 
235, 236, 237. 

Delaware?, 78, 85, 156, 157, 160, 162, 
177, ISO, 1S5, 210, 212, 263; vil- 
lages burned, 267, 270, 272, 273, 
277, 364. 

Deniaux, Cherubin de, 54. 

De Peyster, General J. Watts, 223. 

De Peyster, Major Arent Schuyler, 
211,' 221 ; early life of, 221 ;' his 
appearance and character, 221 ; his 
marriage, 222 ; his poems, 222 ; 
commands at Detroit, 253, 260 ; 
kindness to American prisoners, 
260 ; furnishes men and ammuni- 
tion to oppose Crawford's expedi- 
tion, 270 ; his opinion of the Mora- 
vian massacre and Crawford torture, 
274; thinks peace in the Northwest 
impossible, 277; meets Brant, 300; 
transferred to Niagara, 313; re- 
turns to England, 313; his life in 
Scotland, 313; his poetical contest 
with Robert Burns, 314; death of, 
314. 



390 



INDEX 



Derruisseau, 60. ; Du:.:_ ::. 71. e, sloop-of-war, '222. 

De E to, 25. Dunmore*s w..: 

Detroit, founded by Cadillac, 45 ; Jes- suits of, 194, 212, 3S4. 

uit h. - " :i at, 51 ; be- Duquesne, Governor of New France, 

_ ". by Indians ' vndered prepares to drive the English from 

to Eng ts ... society ar, 107; the Ohio country, S4. - 

attacked by Pontiac, 119; capital Durantaye, 39. 

of the Northwest, 205; Hamii: - 

description of, 206 ; fort at, 208, E tj of, 101, 146, 147, 151. 

21S ; Clark plans capture of, 238, E_:s_::.T:.:'n:as A., begins experiments 

242 ; Indians at, 249 ; Fort Lernou'.t at Fort Gratio:. 

built, 2i . planned, 26'J ; Eiue:.tion in the Northwest, S29. 



outlet for trade of, 310, 346 ; sur- 
71; description of, by 
General Wayne, 37S, 379. 

Detroit country, Conferences in, 39. 

Detroit River Lseovered, 25, 31. 

De Yierviile, 227. 

I Like George, 93. 

Dinwiddie, Governor, 81 ; defends 
". > Erontiera, S4 ; ; eeks aid 

against the French. B 

Dongan, Governor of New York, at- 
tempts to capture Michilimackinac, 
39. 

Dorchester, Lord, assumes governor- 
ship of Canada, 302 ; insists on 
holding Northwestern pos:- 
304 ; his high character, 305 ; his 
friendship with Wolfe, 305 ; his 
Indian policy, 306, 307, 345 ; dis- 
turbed at United States military 
preparations, 347. 352; orders sur- 
render of Northwest posts, 370. 

Doughtv, Major, builds Fort Harmar, 
S44. " 

Doyle, Major W: -renders 

Michilimackinac, 375. 

Draper, Lyman C. 173, 186, 213, 224. 

Dubuisson, Joseph Guyon, defends 
Detroit against Indians, 55. 

Ducharme, II., 256. 

Duer, Colonel William, 343. 

Duff, John, 218. 

Dugue, M., 45. 

Du Juanay, Father, 24. 

Du Lhut bull t Si Joseph on St. 

Clair River, 39. 

Dunmore, Earl of, 1S5; bi3 perplexi- 
ty, 1: " *rn lands, 
1S7; marches against Indians, 1S9; 
makes peace, 191 ; honors to, 192, 
193, 212, 216, 217, 320, 333. 



Bel River. 174. 

Elizabeth, Queen, 64. 

214 - - 72. 

El ::, Richard R., 51, 60, 115. 

Embarrass River, 231, 233. 

England, Colonel, commandant at De- 
leelines to surrender t"~ 
370,' S74. 

England, Strength of, in Am:: 
attempts to gain the Norths - 
39; furnishes cheapest mark-.:-. 4 4. 
53 ; her title to the Northwest, 64, 
90 ; E d _'l i sh traders in Ohio country, 
Si : English and French policies 
cont: - • makes nation 
of French invasion c: 
wejt, 92 ; defeats of, 
of, 100 ; gains in Seven Years' War, 
141 ; prefers to give up territory to 
Unite 889; effects of reten- 

tion of Western posts, 304 ; pre- 
pared to go to war to . 
we?t posts. 

iam Hayden. 220. 

'.--' .' :urch, Opposition to. SO. 

_ton, Captain Geo r I - - - - ' 

.x. Honorable William, 69. 
:- :. Lord, 69. 

Timbers, 213 ; battle of. 366. 
f the Ohio, 76. 
Farmer. 8 
Farquier, Lieutenant-governor of Yir- 

. 149, 150. 
V _'. Paul, first lawyer in the 

Northwest territorv, 342. 
Field, Colonel John/213. 
Finley, John, explores Kentucky. 155. 
Fitzhugh, Henry. 184. 
Floridas, The, exchansed for 
141, 144. 



391 



INDEX 



Forbes, General John, forces the evac- 
uation of Fort Duquesne, 100; suc- 
cess and death of, 102, 147, 150, 
115, 270. 

Force, Peter, 354. 

Ford, Captain Heury A., 2G6. 

Forts :— Chartres, S2, 101, 104, 168, 
170, 171 ; surrendered to the Eng- 
lish, 255; Crevecceur, 36, 168; 
Defiance, 364; Duquesne, 100,101; 
Frontenac, 35 ; Gage, 170,215,219; 
Gower, 193; Gratiot, 40 ; Hamilton, 
353; Harmar, 335, 344,353; treaty 
of, 346, 367 ; Jefferson, 239 ; Knox, 
353; Laurens, 251, 252; abandoned, 
267; Lernoult, 249, 348; Mackinac, 
254; Mcintosh, 251; abandoned, 
267; treaty of, 346; Miami, 126, 
366; surrendered, 371 ; Necessity, 
151; Ontario, 347; Orange, 10; 
Ouiatanon, 166, 167, 168, 174; Pat- 
rick Henry, 238 ; Pitt (see also Pitts- 
burg), invested by Indians, 152, 1S5 ; 
name changed to Fort Dunmore, 
212; Pontchartiain, 82; Recoverv, 
363; Sackville, 234, 235; Sandusky 
captured, 126; Stanwix, treaty of, 
ISO, 182, 299, 352; Steuben, *353; 
St. Charles, 256 ; St. Joseph capt- 
ured, 127; St. Joseph, on the St. 
Clair, 40 ; Washington, 348, 353 ; 
Wayne, 350 ; William, 294. 

Fox, Charles James, opposes Quebec 
bill, 201, 283, 290, 300. 

Fox River, 5, 25. 

France, Numerical strength of, in Amer- 
ica, 8 ; assumes the aggressive in the 
Northwest, 38 ; economic policy of, 
46 ; her claims to the Northwest, 63 ; 
takes possession of Ohio country, 
74 ; losses in Seven Years' War, 141; 
opposes American extension, 280. 

Franklin, Benjamin, his plan for union 
of the colonies, 91 ; plans colonies 
on the Ohio, 92; secures supplies 
for Braddock, 94 ; argues for reten- 
tion of Canada, 141; says Ameri- 
can independence improbable, 142 ; 
promotes Walpole grant, 175; an- 
swers Lord Hillsborough, 182; at 
Quebec, 205, 222, 270; his services 
in Paris, 280-283 ; in peace nego- 
tiations, 281, 318, 322, 384. 



Franklin, Governor William, 175, ISO, 
183. 

Fraser, Lieutenant, sent to Illinois 
country, 164, 172. 

Frazer, John, 87. 

Frederick the Great, 282. 

French and Indian War begun, 89. 

French proper names, Confusion in 
the, 59 ; aid the Indians during the 
Pontiac war, 125; assist Gladwin, 
130; traders become British sub- 
jects, 163. 

Fiiedenwald, Dr. Herbert, 184. 

Frontenac, Count, 27, 34 ; he celebrates 
his victories, 38. 

Fry, Colonel Joshua, 89. 

Far-trade, accessibility of, 143, 286; 
description of, 293,' 295, 304, 347, 
3S1. 

Gage, General Thomas, repudiates 
Bradstreet'a peace with Indians, 
139, 172, 183. 

Gallatin, Albert, meets Washington 
on the Ohio, 310. 

Gallipolis, settlement of, 343. 

Galvez, 261. 

Garfield, James A., 321. 

George, Captain Robert, 238. 

George III., Gladwin presented to, 
139, 193, 198 ; Brant refuses to 
kiss the hand of, 300. 

Georgian Bay, 11, 45. 

Gere, Amable de, 96. 

Germain, Lord George, 228, 248, 253. 

Germain, Pere, 49. 

Germans in the Shenandoah Valley, 
72; in the Northwest, 86; in New 
York, 178. 

Gibault, Father, receives surrender of 
Vincennes, 215; Hamilton's opinion 
of, 232, 235; at Michilimackinac, 
254 ; Sinclair's opinion of, 255 ; 
baptizes first child at St. Louis, 
256. 

Gibraltar the price demanded by 
Spain, 258, 282. 

Gibson, Colonel John, writes out Lo- 
gan's message, 192, 194, 252, 268, 
269. 

Gillman, Joseph, 339. 

Girty, George, 211. 

Girty, James, 211. 



393 



INDEX 



Girty, Simon, translates Logan's mes- 
sage, 192; his early life, 212 ; es- 
capes to Detroit, 214 ; witnesses 
torture of Crawford, 274 ; escapes 
from Detroit, 382. 

Gist, Christopher, his explorations, 
75-S0 ; removes to the Ohio, 85 ; 
accompanies Washington to the 
French, 85 ; his sons, 75. 

Gladwin, Major Henry, explores Lake 
Erie, 146 ; with Sir William John- 
son at Detroit, 109 ; Indian com- 
plaints against, 110; military train- 
ing of, 115; his marriage, 116; 
forces French to refuse aid to Ind- 
ians, 136; advises free sale of 
rum to Indians, 137; his course ap- 
proved by Amherst, 138; promoted, 
138, 1 39 ; returns to England and is 
presented to George III., 139 ; death 
and burial, 140. 

Gladwin, The, strange escape of, 135. 

Gooch, Governor of Virginia, wel- 
comes Scotch-Irish, 72. 

Gorrell, Lieutenant J., commands at 
Green Bay, 129. 

Gouon, M., warns Gladwin, 112. 

Gouon family, 59, 60. 

Grand Company. (See Walpole Grant.) 

Grand Portage, 289, 293. 

Grand Portage of Lake Superior, 383. 

Grand Sables, 17. 

Grant,Major,hisforceslaughtered, 101. 

Gratiot, Captain Charles, 40. 

Great Kanawha River, 181. 

Great Slave Lake, 293. 

Gieathouse murders, 186, 188. 

Green, George W., 287. 

Green Bay, 4, 11, 12, 21, 22, 23, 34, 1 29. 

Greenbrier River, settlements on, 148. 

Greenville, 366. 

Grenada, Government of, 144. 

Grenolle, companion of Brule, 2. 

Grenville, Sir Richard, founds Roa- 
noke colony, 65. 

Griffin, The, first ship on the upper 
Lakes, 27. 

Grigon, Captain, 224. 

Grosse Isle, 31. 

Grosse Pointe, Indian defeat at, 58. 

Grosseilliers, Medard Chouart, Sieur 
des Grosseilliers. (See Radisson 
and Grosseilliers.) 



Guadaloupe, 141. 

Guerin, Jean, companion of Menard, 
15. 

Guyon, Marie Therese, wife of Cadil- 
lac, 50. 

IIaldimand Papers, 276. 

Ilaldimand, Sir Frederick, 154 ; suc- 
ceeds Carleton, 215, 235, 256, 259; 
shocked by news of Crawford's tort- 
ure, 275; withdraws war parties, 
291 ; opinion as to boundaries, 292; 
refuses to surrender posts, 296 ; 
seats Mohawks in Canada, 298 ; en- 
tertains Brant, 300, 337. 

Hale, Edward Everett, 330. 

Half -king of the Six Nations de- 
mands the retirement of the French, 
85. 

Hamelin, Louis, 96. 

Hamilton, Alexander, objects to for- 
mation of new States, 318. 

Hamilton, Governor of Pennsylvania, 
89. 

Hamilton, Henry, Lieutenant-govern- 
or and Superintendent at Detroit, 
205 ; prepares to invade the Illi- 
nois country, 216 ; accused of usur- 
pation, 227 ; sets out for the Illinois 
country, 229 ; repairs fort at Vin- 
cennes, 230 ; ignorant of Clark's 
approach, 234 ; surrenders Vin- 
cennes, 235 ; his journey to Will- 
iamsburg, 236 ; placed in irons by 
command of Jefferson, 237 ; re- 
turns to England, 237 ; his procla- 
mation, 263, 295 ; appointed Lieu- 
tenant-governor of Canada, 312; 
removed, 312; Governor of Bermu- 
da, 312; town of Hamilton named 
for, 312; Governor of Dominica, 
313; death of, 313, 378. 

Hammond, George, British Minister, 
297. 

Hamtramck, Lieutenant-colonel, 354 ; 
receives surrender of Fort Miami, 
371; arrives at Detroit, 376; sketch 
of, 376, 377. 

Banbury, Thomas, 73, 81. 

Hand, General Edward, 213, 214, 267. 

Harding, Colonel, 350. 

Hardy, Samuel, 320. 

Harmar. General, takes control of 



393 



INDEX 



matters in the Northwest, 324, 336 ; 
gives Sunday dinners to Ohio set- 
tlers, 341, 344 ; expedition of, 
against the Indians, 350. 

Harris, Mary, Indian captive, 78. 

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 167. 

Harrison, William Henry, 231 ; Gov- 
ernor of Virginia, 310. 

Harrod, William, 251. 

Hartley, David, perfects treaty of 
1783, 290. 

Harvard College, 338, 339, 342, 345. 

Havana captured by the English, 141. 

Hay, Jehu, Lieutenant-governor at 
Detroit, 130, 211, 237, 312; death 
of, 313. 

Hay, Major, 230. 

Hayet, Margaret, sister of Radisson 
and wife of Des Grosseilliers, 10. 

Helm, Captain Leonard, 230, 236, 238. 

Henderson, Colonel Richard, proprie- 
tor of Transylvania, 216, 218. 

Henderson & Company, 322. 

Hennepin, Louis, longs to go to New 
France, 30 ; assists at building of 
the Griffin, 30 ; desires to remain 
at Detroit, 35 ; names Lake Ste. 
Claire, 32 ; is sent on a voyage 
down the Illinois, 35, 16S, 378. 

Henry, Alexander, British trader, 129. 

Henrv, Patrick, Governor of Virginia, 
185, 186, 217, 218. 

Henrv, William Wirt, 72. 

Hey, Chief-justice, 197, 199. 

Hillsborough, Lord, opposes Ohio Col- 
ony project, 175, 181 ; Franklin 
forces resignation of, 182, 196. 

Hinsdale, Dr. B. A., 316. 

Hoar, Senator George F., 327, 330. 

Hocking River, 193. 

Holmes, Ensign, commandant at Fort 
Miami, 126. 

Howard, Jacob M., 62. 

Howard, John, on the Ohio, 90. 

Hubbard, Bela, 18. 

Hudson Bay, 12, 21. 

Hudson Bay Company, 21, 144. 

Hull, Lieutenant-colonel William, 296, 
321, 339, 384. 

Huron country, 6. 

Huron Islands, 19. 

Ilurons, 9, 12, 24, 34, 56, 57, 210, 211, 
300. 



Illinois, County of, 220. 

Illinois country, French in, 168; sur- 
rendered to the English, 173, 203. 

Illinois Indians, 23, 36, 56, 169, 208. 

Illinois River, 26, 36. 

Indians, Trade with, cut off by Iroquois, 
38; allotted lands at Detroit, 46, 52, 
54 ; their claims to the Northwest, 
86; lands of, in 1763, 145; treat- 
ment of prisoners, 161; trade with, 
at Fort Chartres, 169 ; discipline of, 
in battle, 190; orgies of, 207; coun- 
cils of, 210; terrorized by Clark, 
238; not to be employed against 
whites, 241 ; after Revolution, 291 ; 
expense of, 292 ; number of cap- 
tives taken by, 352 ; insist on the 
Ohio as the boundary, 362. 

Ireland, religious persecutions in, 71. 

Iroquois, 6 ; friends of the English. 
8, 12, 17, 23, 28, 39, 41, 42, 66, 135, 
17S, 221 ; claims of, 318 ; claims to 
Western lands not valid, 319. 

Irvine, William, 268. 

Isle au Coohon, 107. 

Isle Royale, 20. 

Jacker, Father Edward, 1 6 ; discovers 
Marquette's remains, 27. 

Jamestown founded, 65. 

Jamet, Lieutenant, 128. 

Jay, John, peace commissioner, 281, 
283; failure of, in Spain, 2S5 ; . 
Franklin's confidence in, 2S5 ; takes 
leading part in treaty, 2S6; his ar- 
gument as to the Northwest, 288; 
triumph of, 290; negotiates treaty 
with England, 367. 

Jay Treaty, 367, 368, 370, 382, 384. 

Jcbb, Rev. Henry Galdwin, 107. 

Jefferson, Thomas, his report of Lo- 
gan's message, 191, 218 ; his treat- 
ment of Hamilton, 237; assures 
Clark of aid against Detroit, 238 ; 
opposes Spain on the Mississippi, 
239 ; his policy as to the employ- 
ment of Indians, 241, 242; peace 
commissioners, 284, 285 ; nego- 
tiates for surrender of the North- 
west posts, 297; loyalist poetry as 
to his treatment of Hamilton, 312, 
320 ; his plan for ceded territory, 
322, 324; would exclude slavery 



394 



INDEX 



from the Northwest, 325 ; proposes 
classical names for States of the 
Northwest, 325, 329, 335. 

Jenkins, William, 85. 

Jesuit Manuscript, The, 60. 

Jesuits, Claims of, 28 ; traffic in furs, 43. 

Jogues, Isaac, at Sault Ste. Marie, 6 ; 
death of, 8. 

Johnson, Guy, 180. 

Johnson, Sir John, British superin- 
tendent of Indian affairs, 803 ; his 
significant letter to Brant, 303, 352. 

Johnson, Sir William, 91 ; in charge 
of Indian affairs, 94, 106 ; made a 
baronet, 98 ; at Lake George, 98 ; 
at Detroit, 108, 160; exceeds his in- 
structions, 153, 181, 188, 213, 245; 
sends Croghan to Illinois country, 
162 ; his plan for Ohio colony, 174 ; 
ordered to perfect Indian boundary, 
177; early life of, 179, 180; death 
of, 247. 

Johnson, Thomas, president of the 
Potomac Company, 311. 

Johnson vs. Mcintosh, 64, 187, 319, 
320, 323. 

Joliet, Louis, Birth of, 6 ; on the De- 
troit, 25 ; discovers the Mississippi, 
38, 294. 

Joncaire, Captain, 87. 

Jones, Gabriel John, 216. 

Jones, Rev. Arthur E., 6. 

Jordan, John W., 380. 

Jouan, Henri, 6. 

Juniata River, 76. 

Kallexdar, Robert, 78. 

Kaskaskia, 26, 170, 215, 218, 323. 

Kenton, Simon, 185, 193. 

Kentucky country, Gist in, 80, 178 ; 
Indian title to, 180; first settle- 
ments in, 185, 216 ; raids into, 244, 
248, 262, 275; influx of settlers, 
262, 308 ; isolation of, 309 ; emigra- 
tion to, 340 ; emigrants to, attacked 
by Indians, 341, 385. 

Kentucky River, 80, 209. 

Kerlerec, Governor at New Orleans, 
169. 

Keweenaw Bay, 15. 

Keweenaw Point, 20. 

Kickapoos, 164, 165, 166, 167, 241. 

Kidd, Benjamin, 44. 



King, Rufus, moves to exclude slavery 

from the Northwest, 326, 329. 
King Philip's War, 9. 
King's Mountain, Battle of, 75. 
Knight, Dr. John, 273. 
Knox, Henry, Secretary of War, 363. 

L'Anse, 15. 

L'Arbre Croche, Indian council at, 227. 

La Chine, 29, 45. 

La Forest, Lieutenant, 39. 

La Fortune, 96. 

La Hontan, on the Detroit River, 39. 

La Jaunay, Father, missionary at 
Mackinac, 128. 

La Pointe d'Esprit, 22, 23. 

La Salle, Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur' 
de la Salle, friend of Count Fronte- 
nac, 27 ; builds the Griffin — his pur- 
poses — his creditors, 28 ; discovers 
the Ohio, 29 ; early life of, 29 ; 
reaches St. Ignace, 83 ; builds Fort 
St. Joseph, 35 ; builds Fort Creve- 
coeur, 37; returns to Fort Fionte- 
nac, 87; murder of, 37, 38, 55, 87, 
168. 

La Tour, store-keeper at Detroit, 60. 

Labrador fisheries, 200. 

Labutte, Interpreter, 114. 

Laclede. (See Liguest.) 

Lafayette, Indiana. (See Fort Ouia- 
tanon.) 

Lakes: — Athabaska, 293 ; Chautauqua, 
74 ; Erie, 25 ; Maurepas, 55 ; Mich- 
igan, discovery of, 4 ; Nipissing, 45 ; 
of the Hurons (early name of Geor- 
gian Bay) ; of the Stinkards (see 
Green Bay); of the Woods, 290, 
293 ; Pontchartrain, 55 ; Sainte 
Claire, 32 ; Superior, Menard's visit 
to, 14 ; Radisson's description of, 
16; called Lake Tracy, 22; Win- 
nebago, 25 ; Winnipeg, 292. 

Lalemant, Gabriel, 4. 

Lancaster treaty of 1744, 90. 

Langlade, Charles Michel de, 82; at 
Braddock's defeat, 96; attacks Pi- 
qua, 83; familv of, 84, 129; early 
life of, 223, 224; in the Revolution, 
223 ; in French and Indian War, 
225 ; at massacre of Michilimacki- 
nac, 226. 

Lansdowne Papers, 287. 



395 



INDEX 



Lauderoute family, 59. 

Laurens, Ilenrv, peace commissioner, 
284, 290. 

Law, Judge John, 166. 

Lead mines, 169. 

Le Bceuf, 84, 129 ; capture of, 151. 

Le Gras, 208. 

Lee, Arthur, 299, 320. 

Lee, Francis Lightfoot, 184. 

Lee, Richard Henry, 184, 326. 

Lee, Thomas, 73. 

Lernoult, Major Richard Beringer, 
211; builds Fort Lernoult at De- 
troit, 219. 

Leslie, Lieutenant, 128. 

Lewis, Captain, demands surrender of 
Northwest posts, 370. 

Lewis, General Andrew, 190. 

Liguest, Pierre Laclede, founds St. 
Louis, 169, 256. 

Lincoln, General Benjamin, 361. 

Lincoln, Mrs. Abraham, 324. 

Linn, Colonel William, 220. 

Little Turtle, 351. 

Livingstone, Robert, plans English set- 
tlement on the Detroit, 43. 

Lochry, Colonel Archibald, 267. 

Loftus, Major, Expedition of, 172. 

Logan, Iroquois Indian, 18S, 212; re- 
venges the murder of his relatives, 
189; his message to Dunmore, 191; 
sketch of, 192, 212, 251. 

Logstown, 76, 81, 85, 90, 156, 162. 

Longfellow, Ilenrv W., 343. 

Longprie, Fhilip, 168. 

Longueuil, De, 39. 

Lorimer, 209. 

Louden, John, Earl of, 245. 

Louis XIII., 2. 

Louis XIV., 25, 27, 44, 47, 53. 

Louis XVI., 280, 284. 

Louisiana, 33 ; named by La Salle, 
37, 55 ; transferred by France to 
Spain, 141 ; transferred to France, 
304. 

Louisville, 29, 164, 220. (See also Falls 
of the Ohio.) 

Lucas, La Salle's pilot, 32, 33. 

Ludlow's Station, 353. 

Lusson, Saint, at Sault Ste. Marie, 24. 

Luzerne, French Minister, 284, 290. 

Lyman, General, agent of Ohio Com- 
pany, 176. 



McAffee Brothers, 1S5. 

McClure, Colonel A. K., 151. 

McDougall, Lieutenant George, 112; 
detained by Pontiac, 123 ; escape 
of, 131. 

Mellenry, James, Secretary of War, 
371. 

Mcllwraith, J. N., 102. 

Mcintosh, General Lachlin, 251, 252, 
267. 

McKee, Alexander, 211 ; early life of, 
213, 260, 262, 275, 346, 348, 362, 
364, 365, 366, 383. 

McLaughlin, Andrew C, 305. 

McLennan, William, 102. 

McQuire, John, 85. 

MeTavishes, the fur-traders, 294. 

Mackinac, 229. (See also Michilimack- 
inac.) 

Mahigan, an Ottawa Indian, discloses 
Pontiac's plot, 1 14. 

Makemie, Rev. Francis, founds Pres- 
byterian churches in America, 71. 

Maiden, British post at, 372, 3S3. 

Manitoulin Islands, 11. 

Mann, Captain Gother, his report on 
Northwest posts, 347. 

Marest, Father, mentions Vincennes, 
165, 166. 

Maigry, Pierre, his publications, 49. 

Marietta, Settlement of, 334-336, 351. 

Marin, French commander, S5. 

Marquette, James, at Sault Ste. Marie, 
22 ; hears of the Mississippi, 23 ; 
founds St. Ignace, 24; joined by 
Joliet, 25; they reach the Mississip- 
pi, 26 ; their return, 26 ; death of 
Marquette, 26; buried at St. Ignace, 
26, 38, 168, 221. 

Marshall, Chief-justice, decision of, 64. 

Martin, Abraham, gives name to Plains 
of Abraham, 10. 

Martin, Helene, wife of lladisson, 10. 

Martin, Jacob, on the Greenbrier, 14S. 

Martin, Major, Cherokee agent, 239. 

Maryland proposes to divide the North- 
west lands into several States, 315 ; 
refuses to enter Confederacy until 
Northwest lands shall be ceded, 
316; instructs her delegates, 318; 
joins the Confederation, 319; effect 
of her action in regard to Western 
lands, 321. 



39G 



INDEX 



Mascoutins, 5, 56, 57, 58, 164, 165, 166. 

Mason, Edward G., 258, 259. 

Mason, George, 218. 

Massachusetts, Boundaries of, 8, 66 ; 
confirms Cadillac grants, 50; cedes 
her Western lands, 320 ; her title 
indefensible, 321. 

Massacres on Susquehanna and Mo- 
hawk, 248. 

Matavit, Father, 222. 

Matthews. Major, commandant at De- 
troit, 302. 

May, Colonel John, his trip to Mariet- 
ta, 340. 

Meigs, Return Jonathan, 339, 342. 

Menard, Rene, his voyage to Lake 
Superior, 14; death of, 15. 

Meuominees, 56, 57, 226. 

Mer Douce (name of Lake Huron 
proper), 2. 

Mercer, Lieutenant-colonel, 147. 

Miami Indians, 78, 79, 80, 83, 346, 
348, 304. 

Miami River, 75. 

Michigan, 66, 203, 320. 

Miohilimackinae, 23, 33 ; strategic 
point for fur -trade, 40; sale of 
brandy at, 47; massacre at, 128; 
during the revolution, 221-22S; 
Patrick Sinclair at, 253 ; fort built 
on island of, 254, 346, 348; sur- 
rendered, 371 ; civil government es- 
tablished at, 378. 

Miller, Christopher, 364. 

Mingoes, 270. 

Mirmet, Father, at Yineennes, 166. 

Mississippi Company, The, 184. 

Mississippi River, 5 ; Radisson near, 
11; Allouez hears about the, 22; 
described to Marquette, 23 ; dis- 
covery of, 25 ; free navigation of, 
281, 282, 2S5, 286, 322. 

Missouris, 56. 

Mobile, 261. 

Mohawks, 210. 

Moliere's " Tartuffe," 41. 

Moll, Herman, his map, 165. 

Monckton, General, at Fort Pitt, 146, 
149. 

Money, kinds of, 165 ; scarcity of, 240. 

Monongahela River, Virginia settle- 
ments on the, 148. 

Monroe, James, 320; struggles with 



question for temporary government 

of the Northwest, 326. 
Montcalm, General, 174, 24 5. 
Montgomery, General, 205. 
Montour, Andrew, 76. 
Montreal, Capitulation of, 102, 246. 
Moravian Indians, 262 ; at Detroit, 

263 ; origin of, 264 ; established at 

Mt. Clemens, 265 ; massacre of, 266. 
Morgan, George, Indian Commissioner, 

168, 213, 229, 263. 
Morgan, John, 369. 
Mound-builders, 22, 335. 
Mount Desert titles, based on Cadillac 

grant, 50. 
Murray, Honorable John, 187. 
Murray, General James, Governor at 

Quebec, 135. 
Muskingum River, 76, 334. 

Xadoneseroxons. (See Sioux.) 

Natchez, 55, 258, 261. 

Navarre, Robert, 59. 

Negro slavery, 67. 

Neville, Captain John, 213, 267. 

New Brighton, Pennsylvania, 157. 

New Connecticut, 369. 

New Haven colony, 8. 

New Mexico, Mines of, 2S6. 

New River, Settlements on, 148. 

New York, Claims of, to Western coun- 
try, 66 ; Indian trade in, 67; early 
settlements in,17S; cedes her West- 
ern lands to the United States, 318, 
319 ; wins credit by giving up West- 
ern lands, 321. 

Newark, Canada, Trade at, 381. 

Newfoundland fisheries, 281, 285. 

Newton, Marv, wife of Simon Girty 
the elder, 212. 

Niagara, 310 ; surrendered, 371 ; trade 
at, 381. 

Nicolet, Jean, protege of Champlain, 
3; voyage of, 4; death of, 6, 221, 
294. 

Niles, Michigan, 257. 

Non-intercourse resolutions, 186. 

North, Lord, defends Quebec Bill, 
200, 203; succeeded by Rocking- 
ham, 283, 2S6, 290. 

North Carolina, 65. 

Northwest closed to settlers in 1763, 

. 144; first charter of, 145; pledged 



597 



INDEX 



to freedom, 193; included in Vir- 
ginia, 195; civil government begins 
in, 205 ; independence announced 
in, 209; jurisdiction over lands in, 
ceded over by the States, 315-322. 

Northwest Company, 292, 293, 381. 

Northwest posts, United States de- 
mand surrender of, 296 ; British 
repair the, 347; surrender of, or- 
dered by Dorchester, 370. 

Northwest Territory, early laws of, 
340. (See also Ordinance of 1787.) 

Norveil, Senator John, 37. 

Tost. (See Vincennes.) 

Ohio, State of, planned in a Boston 
tavern, 334. 

Ohio Company of Massachusetts, The, 
332. 

Ohio Company of Virginia, The, organ- 
ized, 73 ; sends Gist to explore coun- 
try, 75 ; company's post seized by 
French, 89 ; attempts to establish 
its rights, 145; financial affairs of, 
147 ; coalesces with Walpole or 
Grand Company, 176, 1S2, 1S3. 

Ohio country, included in government 
of Quebec, 200 ; influx of New- 
Englanders to, 308. 

Ohio River, discovered by La Salle, 
59 ; settlements on, 148 ; demanded 
as boundary, 302. 

Ojibwas, 6, 82. 

Old Britain, Indian chief, 83. 

Old Point Comfort, 65. 

Old Village Point, 15, 

Onondaga, Mission at, 10. 

Ontonagon copper bowlder, The, 22. 

Ordinance of 1787, 324-329; princi- 
ples of, 328 ; origin of, 329 ; au- 
thorship of, 330. 

Osages, 56. 

Oswald, Richard, negotiates treaty of 
1783, 2S5, 288. 

Oswego, 248, 310; surrendered, 371; 
trade at, 3S1. 

Ottagamies, 56, 57, 58. 

Ottawa River, 45. 

.Ottawas, 26, 34, 42, 56, 57, 79, 80, 82, 
103, 111, 112, 114, 119, 120, 121, 
122, 129, 158, 174, 211, 224, 226, 
270. 

Ouiatanon, 129. 



Parent, Josepit, 52, 60, 129. 

Parker, Gilbert, 14, 102. 

Parkman, Francis, 2, 4, 8, 24, 112, 
113, 155, 173. 

Parkman Club of Milwaukee, 16. 

Parsons, General Samuel H., 332, 333, 
336, 339. 

Paully, Ensign, 126. 

Pease, Seth, 369. 

Pellew, George, 2S6. 

Penns, The, 102, ISO. 

Pennsylvania, Indian trade in, 67 ; 
immigration into, 71 ; appropria- 
tions for Indian gifts, 177 ; erects 
county west of the mountains, 182; 
claims Pittsburg, 185. 

Pennsylvania Dutch in Shenandoah 
Valley, 80. 

Pennsylvania Gazette, 209. 

Pensacola, 261. 

Pepys, Samuel, preserves Radisson 
papers, 13. 

Perrot, 25. 

Phips, Sir William, 38. 

Piankeshas, 79. 

Pickaway Plains, 190. 

Pickering, Timothy, first proposes ab- 
olition of slavery in the Northwest, 
325,331, 361. 

Pictured Rocks, 18. 

Pinet, Yves, 52. 

Pipe, Captain, Delaware chief, 213, 
263, 273, 335. 

Piqua, Croghan and Gist at, 78 ; French 
attack on, 83. 

Pitt, William, comes into power, 99 ; 
his American policy, 100, 141, 143. 
(See also Lord Chatham.) 

Pittman, Captain Philip, 171, 172. 

Pittsburg, 76 ; Indians urge building 
fort at, 81, 89, 101, 209; centre of 
disturbances, 2GS, 340. 

Plains of Abraham, 100, 337. 

Plymouth colony, 8, 65. 

Point Pleasant," Battle of, 186, 190, 
214. 

Pontchartrain, Count, 44, 46, 51, 53, 
55. 

Pontiac at surrender of Detroit, 103, 
104; plots destruction of fort, 111; 
his character, 111; plot discovered, 
117; summons Gladwin to surren- 
der, 119 ; vain appeal to the French, 



393 



INDEX 



135; sues for peace, 137; meets 
Croghan in Illinois country, 167; 
sends embassy to New Orleans, 172 ; 
his murder and burial, 173 ; his son 
friendly to the Americans, 114, 257. 

Pontiac Diary, 114. 

Poole, Dr. William F., 276, 330. 

Port Huron, Michigan, 39. 

Port Royal, 50. 

Portage Lake, 19. 

Porter, Augustus, 369. 

Porter, Captain Moses, receives sur- 
render of Detroit, 372. 

Post, Frederick, 101. 

Potier, Pere, 229. 

Pottawatomies, 34, 56, 57, 122, 127, 
210, 257, 261, 270. 

Pownall. Governor Thomas, 91, 183. 

Prairie du Rocher, 170. 

Presbyterians in America, 70. 

Presque Isle (or Presq' Isle), 77, 84, 
151. 

Preston, Colonel, 189. 

Prince Society, 9. 

Prisoners surrendered to Bouquet, 
161. 

Proclamation of 1763, 144, 195, 196. 

Purviance, Samuel, 341. 

Putnam, General Rufus, 330 ; in the 
Old French War, 331 ; acts as Wash- 
ington's chief of engineers at Bos- 
ton, 331 ; petitions for the location 
and survey of Western lands, 332; 
plans the Ohio Companv, 332, 336, 
351. 

Quakers, 81, 151. 

Quebec, Boundaries of, in 1763, 144 ; 

capitulation of town, 102. 
Quebec Act, The, 195-201, 198, 199, 

306, 318. 
Queret, Pierre, 96, 227. 

Radisson, Peter Esprit, arrives in 
New France, 10. 

Radisson and Grosseilliers, first voy- 
age of, to Lake Michigan, 11 ; prob- 
ably reach Lake Superior, 1 1 ; did 
not discover the Mississippi, 12 ; 
confusion in regard to their voy- 
ages, 13 ; return from Lake Michi- 
gan, 14 ; voyage to Lake Superior, 
16 ; description of the Lake Supe- 



rior coast, 20; return to Three Riv- 
ers, 21 ; they transfer allegiance to 
England, and found the Hudson 
Bav Companv, 21, 294. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 64, 65. 

Rawlinson, Richard, 13. 

Baymbault, Charles, 6, 8. 

Ravvenal, 290. 

Red Jacket, 299, 369. 

Repentigny, Count, at Sault Ste. Marie, 
60. 

Revolution, The, 186, 193; ended in 
Northwest, 269 ; end of, announced 
at Detroit, 275. 

Reynolds, John, 324. 

Riehardie, Father de la, 59, 115. 

Roanoke colony, 65. 

Rocheblave, Philip de, 96, 215, 219. 

Rogers, Captain Robert, at Detroit, 
102 ; his early life, 103 ; at siege of 
Detroit, 133, 134; plots to turn 
Michilimackinac over to Spain, 133 ; 
subsequent career of, 134, 320. 

Rogers, Lieutenant John, 232. 

Roman Catholic religion in Canada, 
200. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 185. 

Ross, Clinton, 102. 

Roval American Regiment, 146, 155, 
245, 246. 

Russell, Alfred, 62. 

Ryswick, Treaty of, 75. 

Sacs, 56, 226, 256. 

Sagard, 2. 

Saginaw Bay, 33. 

St. Ange de Bellerive, 164; at Fort 
Chartres, 167, 172; gives burial to 
Pontiac's body, 173; administers 
justice for Spain and America, 255 ; 
delivers St. Louis to Spain, 256 ; 
death of, 256. 

St. Anne's church, Detroit, 46, 51, 54, 
56. 

St. Aubin, Charles, 60. 

St. Aubin family, 59. 

St. Clair, General Arthur, 212, 333; 
arrives at Marietta as Governor of 
the Northwest Territory, 336; early 
life of, 337, 338 ; disputes of, with 
the judges, 340 ; his expedition, 
353 ; failure of his expedition, 357, 
378. 



399 



INDEX 



St. Clair River, 25. 

St. Genevieve, 169, 171. 

St. Ignace, 8, 24, 33, 47. 

St. Joseph, 8, 36, 47; Spanish raid on, 
257 ; population of, 258 ; occupied 
by the British, 381. 

St. "Lcger, General Barry, 228, 259, 
297. 

St. Louis founded, 169 ; French flock 
to, 171; Sinclair's expedition against, 
256-258; surrendered to Spain, 256. 

St. Luc la Corne, 226, 245. 

St. Philip, 170. 

St. Pierre, Legardeur de, 88. 

St. Theresa's Bay, 15. 

Sandusky ,Cra\vford expedition against, 
269. 

Sandwich, 60. 

Sargent, Major Winthrop, 333, 336, 
338 ; adjutant-general of St. Clair's 
expedition, 354, 358 ; erects the 
county of Wayne, 377. 

Sargent, Winthrop, the younger, 312. 

Sault Ste. Marie, first mission at, 6; 
permanent mission at, 22 ; impos- 
ing ceremony at, 24, 34, 37, 60, 61, 
62, 294, 348. 

Scalps, 153, 154; Washington advises 
paying for French, 154 ; received by 
Hamilton, 214, 262; collected at 
Detroit, 278. 

Schaumburg, Captain, 370. 

Schenectady, 178, 369. 

Schlosser, Ensign, 127. 

Schuyler, General, 2S9, 317. 

Scioto Company, Troubles of the, 343. 

Scioto Purchase, 333. 

Scioto River, 78. 

Scotch-Irish, 69, 70, 175. 

Scott, Major-general, 365. 

Scull, Gideon D., 9. 

Senecas, 157, 159, 162, 177, 180, 211, 
212. 

Settlers, Character of, 150. 

Seven Rangers, The, 334. 

Sevier, John, 190. 

Sewell, Stephen, 148. 

Shawanese, 78, 156, 157, 162, 163, 
180, 185, 1S8, 190, 209, 212 ; Clark 
not to make peace with, 241, 251, 
270, 277, 348, 364, 367. 

Shea, John Dawson Gilmarv, 6, 15, 
16, 26, 40. 



Sheafe surrenders Fort Niagara, 375. 

Sheganaba, son of Pontiac, 213. 

Shelburne, Lord, approves Ohio proj- 
ect, 175; reluctant to grant inde- 
pendence, 283, 286; driven from 
power, 289. 

Shelby, Isaac, 193. 

Sheldon, Mrs. E. M., 45. 

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 300. 

Sherman, Colonel, plans invasion of 
Spanish territories, 308. 

Shingiss, King of the Delawares, 85. 

Shirley, Governor William, at Oswego, 
99. 

Sidney, Lord, 302, 314, 346. 

Sillery, Battle of, 61. 

Simcoe, John Graves, Lieutenant-gov- 
ernor of Canada, 362, 363. 

Simple, Father Peter, 265. 

Sinclair, Lieutenant-governor Patrick, 
40 ; ordered to Michilimackinac, 
253 ; builds fort on island, 254 ; ex- 
pedition against St. Louis, 256, 257, 
258 ; released from Newgate prison, 
314. 

Sioux, 20, 22, 24. 

Six Nations, 78, 85 ; place their lands 
under English protection, 90, 108 ; 
complain of settlers, 149, 158; offer 
to part with title to Ohio country, 
177, 181 ; loval to the Crown, 243, 
270, 299, 300, 362, 369. (See also 
Iroquois.) 

Slavery in the Northwest Territory, 
325, 330. 

Sleeping Bear Point, 26. 

Smith, Colonel James, his narrative, 
95. 

Sorbonne, The, decision as to sale of 
liquor at Michilitnackiuac, 47. 

Soule, Anna May, 289. 

Souligney, 9G. 

Spain assists France in Seven Years' 
War, 141; aids Americans, 220; 
hostile to the English, 208 ; tamper 
with Indians, ISO; Spain's raid on St. 
Joseph, 258; her claims to Western 
country, 260; designs of, on North- 
west, 280, 289, 308, 310 ; aids the 
United States, 282 ; controversies 
with, 322. 

Spottswood, Governor, leads a party 
to the Shanaudoah Valley, 69. 



400 



INDEX 



Sproat, Ebenezer, 342. 

Stamp Act, 1S6. 

Stanwix, General John, builds Fort 

Pitt, 102. 
Sterling, Captain, at Fort Chartres, 255. 
Sterling, Jame3, 130, 173. 
Steuben, Baron, 296. 
Stewart, Henry, 85. 
Stone, Frederick D., 330. 
Stough, Captain, 356. 
Straits of Mackinac, Discovery of, 4. 
Sugar Island, 31. 
Suite, Benjamin, 3, 14. 
Surveys, Government plan of, 326. 
Swiss in the Northwest, 86. 
Symmes, John Cleves, 334. 

Talox, 24, 25. 

Tasse, Joseph, 224. 

Tazewell, Littleton YV, 65. 

Tennessee River, 181. 

Thames, Battle of the, 194. 

The Gladwin schooner, 121, 126. 

Three Rivers, 5, 12, 246. 

Thunder Bay, 33. 

Thwaites, Reuben Gold, 6, 13, 33. 

Ticonderoga, 226, 245. 

Tobacco, 2-2 ; as medium of exchange, 
240. 

Tobacco Nation, 12, 23. 

Todd, Colonel John, 220; establishes 
courts in Illinois country, 238 ; 
killed, 275; organizes courts at 
Kaskaskia and Vincennes, 323. 

Todd and McGill, traders, 292. 

Todd family, 324. 

Tonnancour, Madeleine de, 132. 

Tontv, Alphonse de, 45, 49, 51. 

Tontv, Henrv de, 30, 32, 39, 51, 55, 
168. 

Tories, Compensation for, 283, 286, 
306, 312.' 

Towushend, Lord, 291. 

Townshend, Thomas, 287, 391. 

Tracy, Marquis de, 22. 

Traders as cheats, 207 ; corner in Ind- 
ian supplies, 249. 

Transylvania, 216, 322. 

Treachery with Indians legitimate, 125. 

Treaty of 1763, 66, 279. 

Treaty of 1783, 279-282, 307. 

Trent, Captain William, 85, 89. 

Trotter, Colonel, 350. 



Tapper, General, 332. 
Turner, George, 339. 

United States first mentioned in 
Northwest correspondence, 262 ; 
disastrous effects to, by British re- 
tention of Northwest posts, 304 ; 
announcement of, made to army 
and foreign courts, 319. 

Upper Sandusky, 262. 

Utrecht, Treaty of, 74, 75. 

Vax Curler, Arendt, 178. 

Van Rensselaer, Patroon, 17S. 

Vanbraan, Jacob, 85. 

Vandalia colony, 183. 

Varnuni, Judge James M., 333 ; wel- 
comes St. Clair to Marietta, 336, 339. 

Vaughan, Benjamin, 286. 

Venango, 84, 101, 129, 151, 353. 

Vergennes intrigues against including 
Northwest within the United States, 
281, 283, 289 ; chagrined at suc- 
cess of peace treaty, 290. 

Vermont project for reunion with 
England, 247. 

Vessels, Private, on Great Lakes for- 
bidden, 295 ; character of, 34S. 

Vierville, Gautier de, 96. 

Vigo, Francis, captured by Hamilton, 
231 ; assists Clark, 232. 

Villeneuve, Daniel, 224. 

Villieres, Neyon de, 171. 

Vitnont, Father, 5. 

Vincennes, 82; beginnings of, 166, 
20S, 165, 218 ; surrenders to Amer- 
icans, 219; surrenders to British, 
230, 323 ; captured by George Rog- 
ers Clark, 332-338; judges at, 
make land grants, 324. 

Vinsenne, Francois Morgan de, founds 
Vincennes, 106. 

Virginia, early settlements in, 66 ; Ind- 
ian trade, 67 ; Ohio grants, 89 ; 
boundaries of, 66, 153; settlements 
on the Ohio, 185 ; holds courts be- 
yond the Alleghanies, 195 ; estab- 
lishes county of Illinois, 23S; lack 
of funds for war, 240 ; opens land 
office for sale of Northwestern 
lands, 317; remonstrance of, 318; 
offer of, to cede Northwestern lands 
refused by Congress, 319; reserves 



2c 



401 



INDEX 



territory for Clark's soldiers, 320; 
her sacrifice, 321. 

Wabash Company, 187. 

Wabash Indians, 346, 348. 

Wabash River, 78. 

Walker, Charles I., 276. 

Walker, Dr., explores Kentuckv, 185. 

Walker, Joseph B., 103. 

Walpole, Horace, makes sport of 
Washington, 94. 

Walpole, Thomas, 175. 

Walpole grant, 147, 174-176, 181, 
183, 185, 320. 

Walsingham opposes peace treaty, 291. 

Walters, Major, 121. 

War of 1812, 194, 348, 384. 

Ward, Ensign, 89. 

Washington, County of, organized, 342. 

Washington, George, surveys Lord 
Fairfax's lands, 72 ; journey to the 
French on the Ohio, 85-SS ; at Fort 
Necessity, 92 ; with Braddock, 93 ; 
his bravery at Great Meadows, 97 ; 
in Forbes's expedition, 101 ; differ- 
ences with Bouquet, 150 ; his con- 
nections with Lord Dunmore, 1S7; 
land claims, 184; offers non-inter- 
course resolutions, 184, 186 ; his 
opinion of the treaty of 1763, 195; 
at Cambridge, 205; unable to aid 
Detroit expedition, 243; Indian 
policy of, 298; his lands on the 
Ohio, 270 ; owner of Ohio lands, 
309, 311 ; visit of, to Ohio country 
in 1784, 310; Gallatin's meeting 
with, 310; plans route for Western 
trade, 311, 320; plan for govern- 
ment of Northwest, 325, 343 ; plans 
to assert jurisdiction of the United 
States over the Northwest, 345 ; 
calls out militia, 349, 353; his an- 
ger over St. Clair's defeat, 359 ; 
congratulated on surrender of 
Northwest posts, 371. 

Washington, John Augustine, 184. 

Washington, Lawrence, 73 ; manager 
of Ohio Company, 80 ; favors relig- 
ious toleration, 81. 

Washington family, The, 68. 



Watauga commonwealth, 190. 

Wayne, General Anthony, 231 ; early 
life of, 359-361; expedition of, 
360-367; concludes general peace 
with the Indians, 367 ; arrives at 
Detroit, 377 ; death of, 381. 

Wayne county organized, 377. 

Webster, Daniel, 327. 

Weiser, Conrad, 90. 

Weld, Isaac, Jr., 382. 

Wert, George, 139. 

West Virginia, Indian title to, 180. 

Western Indian confederacy, 178. 

Wheeling, 188. 

White Eyes, Delaware chief, 209, 229, 
263. 

White Woman's Creek, 78. 

Whitefish, 16, 34, 348. 

Wild-hemp, 166. 

Wilkinson, General, 353, 371. 

William of Orange, 30, 71. 

Williams, Colonel Ephraim, founds 
Williams College, 98. 

Williamson, Colonel David, 266, 275. 

Willing, Miss Anne, 155. 

Willis, R. Storrs, 377. 

Wills Creek, 89. 

Winnebagoes, 226, 257. 

Winsor, Justin, 8, 13, 14, 24, 321. 

Winthrop, Fitz-John, 38. 

Wisconsin, 66, 320. 

Wisconsin River, 25. 

Wolcott, Oliver, 299. 

Wolfe, General James, 100, 337. 

Woolson, Constance Fenimore, 3S2. 

Worcester, General, 222. 

Wvandottes, 122, 158, 174, 263, 270, 
271, 272, 277, 364. 

Wyllys, Major, 351. 

Wymberley-Jones, George, 354. 

Wythe, George, 213. 

Yadkin River, 135. 

"Yankee Hall," prison at Detroit, 277. 

Yellow Creek, 162, 189. 

Yorke, Sir Joseph, 245, 254. 

Yorktown, Surrender of, 279, 283. 

Zane, Ebenkzer, 341. 
Zeisberger, David, 263, 265. 



THE END 



By ELIZABETH B. CUSTER 



FOLLOWING THE GUIDON. Illustrated. Post 8vo, 
Clotb, Ornamental, 81 50. 

The story is a thrillingly interesting one, charmingly told. . . . 
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begins it will hardly lay it down until it is finished. — Boston Traveller. 

An admirable book. Mrs. Custer was almost as good a soldier 
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BOOTS AND SADDLES ; or, Life in Dakota with 
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and Map. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, 81 50. 

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a consequence " these simple annals of our daily life," as she calls 
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TENTING ON THE PLAINS ; or, General Custer in 

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Mrs. Custer was a keen observer. . . . The narrative abounds in 
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